Frequent Loss of Power in Lexington Center Leaves Businesses Enraged with Eversource

Within 30 days, Lexington Center in Massachusetts has lost power 3 times throughout June. Businesses have begun to turn and complain to Eversource, the energy company that is responsible for providing the energy to Lexington’s shopping center.

“Having spent a lifetime in the Center, power has always been a bit of an issue,” Jeff Lyon, who owns many of the buildings that businesses rent in the town’s Center, told the Observer. “We usually have one of these power outages each season…but not three in [about] 30 days.”

One of the local ice cream shops, Rancatore’s, has specifically been impacted as most of its products rely on the electricity powering the freezers and refrigerators of ice cream. Employees at Rancatore’s had to throw out melting ice cream and turn away customers.

“We had 100 people an hour coming up to the door [that day] and we couldn’t let them in because the power was out,” said Ranc’s owner Joe Rancatore.

Another building that relied heavily on electricity for its well-being was Webster Bank. The Bank was forced to call in security guards due to the loss of power, disabling the high-tech security system they had installed.

Many of the owners and employees of the businesses affected attempted to contact help staff from Eversource, but were unsuccessful. Employees from Webster Bank said none of the branch’s workers received notifications from Eversource regarding the loss of power.

“We’ve gotten nowhere with Eversource…they just say ‘oh it happens’,” Lyon said

After many follow-up calls, LexObserver was finally able to get through to Eversource to learn the causes of the recent outages.

The first outage on June 5 from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. was a result of a series of malfunctions with the equipment. Olessa Stepanova, a communications manager from Eversource, told the Observer, “Our crews responded to equipment issues in the area that led to service interruptions for several businesses,”.

The second outage on June 20 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. was a result of “storm-related damage,” said Stepanova. This caused public controversy as the weather on that day was in the 80s and mostly sunny.

The third outage was on July 8 from 2 to 9 in the morning. Stepanova claimed that the outage was “s “the result of a thunderstorm that brought down a tree on [Eversource’s] lines, requiring both line and tree crews to safely make repairs,”.

Because of severe weather and trees falling on power lines, many towns have thought about moving power lines underground. Towns such as Concord, Wellesley, and Needham have moved some, if not all, of their power lines underground.

However, a major drawback holding back towns from doing so is, of course, cost.