Purcell Electric Department Supervisor Marcos Castillo apologized to citizens for the brief power outages Thursday just before 12 noon.

“We apologize for the interruption in electric service and appreciate your patience and understanding,” Castillo said in a statement to The Purcell Register.

“The City of Purcell is committed to providing the highest level of reliable service possible to our customers.

“However, the equipment involved in this outage is owned and maintained by the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority (OMPA) and is outside the city’s direct control.

“We will continue to work closely with OMPA to restore service as quickly and safely as possible,” Castillo said.

Castillo explained that OMPA was at their substation Thursday morning doing some switching because a piece of equipment that allows them to adjust our service voltage had stopped working.

OMPA completed their switching order to move Purcell to the other transformer in their substation.

That’s when something in the programming for that transformer designed to protect equipment from damage caused the substation to operate twice.

“That’s what caused the brief outages we had earlier in the day,” Castillo said.

OMPA continued to work on what caused the occurrence Thursday afternoon.