A transformer equipment malfunction early Sunday evening left some City of Fredericksburg and Central Texas Electrical Cooperative customers without power.

Fernando Albiter, CTEC Director of Engineering and Technical Services, said the Lower Colorado River Authority substation north of town on FM 965, also known as the Nimitz Substation, had a transformer failure. CTEC personnel responded quickly but it took about two hours for LCRA staff to arrive, determine the cause, inspect and get a solution in place. Albiter said some CTEC customers were without power for those two hours.

CTEC arrived at the substation but since it was not their equipment, they could not begin repairs.

Lee Stubblefield, superintendent for the City of Fredericksburg Electric Department, said power was restored to city customers within about a 30 minutes.

“The city has two substation sources, and all power for city customers was rerouted from the Nimitz substation on FM 965 to the Fredericksburg station, its southern unit near Fredericksburg High School.

“We were able to switch the city over to the southern substation,” Stubblefield said.

He said about 3,000 city residences were affected during the half-hour outage.

“We have a small, tight system, but a cooperative has about 11 counties, so it can take them longer,” Stubblefield said.