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Great Lakes Energy explains the December 2004 Beaver Island outage

Also GLE Explains Outage December 2004

Draft — sources verified, prose evolving

TypeEvent
Date2004-12-12
WithinBeaver Island
ErasModern era
On this page
Event
Date
2004-12-12
Kind
Announcement
Eras
Modern era
Concepts
infrastructuretechnologycommunicationemergency-managementweathercommunity
Within
Beaver Island

Summary

Great Lakes Energy explained that the December 12, 2004 Beaver Island outage was caused by a tree striking the power line feeding the Island cable during a period of wet, heavy snow. The company said the Island generation plant was intended for catastrophic cable failure, not every routine interruption, and that circuit-breaker upgrades were underway.

Evidence limits

This record preserves the utility’s published explanation and does not independently verify the outage cause or the later completion of the upgrades.

Sources

  1. Beaver Beacon, January 2005, "GLE Explains Outage."
    Publishes Dan Nelson''s explanation of the December 12 outage, the standby generation system, circuit-breaker upgrades, and a tree striking the line during wet heavy snow. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 2005-01_Beaver-Beacon
  2. The held issue scan confirms the utility explanation.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 2005-01_Beaver-Beacon

Added 5 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “Great Lakes Energy explains the December 2004 Beaver Island outage”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/beaver-island-gle-december-12-2004-outage-explanation/, accessed [date], citing Beaver Beacon, January 2005, "GLE Explains Outage." (and 1 further source listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-05. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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