Lodi to lose power today and Thursday

For some local neighborhoods it will be light outs today and Thursday as Lodi Electric Utility has scheduled power shutdowns in order to perform needed repairs.

Power will be shut down in areas bounded by Church Street, Schlenker Drive, School Street and Sacramento Street according to Jules Marchesseault, an LEU engineering manager. The outage is necessary to replace transformers and service aging infrastructure in the area.

During today’s outage workers plan to remove a transformer. Although the maintenance is scheduled to last from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., it is likely that power will be restored before then.

“It usually does not take that long, but we have allocated that time as a precaution in case it does,” Marchesseault said. “We patrol the city annually to inspect electrical cables and power grids to make sure that they are functioning properly.”

The city’s electrical grid is overseen by LEU engineers who monitor activity and report if they notice anything suspicious such as dips in voltage levels or loud humming from transformers.

“We rely on out patrols, monitoring of electrical grids and input from the people in the community to indicate where updates need to be made,” Marchesseault said.

The electric utility department is hoping to get ahead on maintenance before any storms hit, Marchesseault said, noting that it’s easier to make changes to cables or transformers when the weather is dry and tame.

Late Thursday evening and early Friday morning, the electric utility department is looking to take advantage of a dry forecast to perform maintenance checks on commercial properties located on East Kettleman Lane and South Stockton Street. The work is scheduled from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.