A holiday blackout in southwestern Kent County

More than 10,000 Consumers Energy customers in Grandville, Wyoming, and Byron Township lost power on Memorial Day, May 25, after a equipment failure knocked out three substations serving southwestern Kent County.

The outage began shortly before 11 a.m., according to the Consumers Energy interactive outage map. By 11:20 a.m., the map showed a dense cluster of outages across the three communities.

"Consumers Energy and ITC crews were able to identify the cause of the large outage in Kent County. The outage was caused by a fault on Consumers Energy equipment called a tap which connects the ITC line to Consumers Energy substations."

That statement came from Consumers Energy shortly after 2 p.m., the utility told WZZM13.

What caused the outage

The outage was first linked to an ITC Michigan 138-kilovolt transmission line that experienced a fault around 11 a.m. ITC operates more than 9,100 circuit miles of power transmission lines and 403 substations across Michigan.

Crews later determined the root cause was not the ITC line itself. The failure occurred on a tap — the piece of equipment that connects the ITC transmission line to Consumers Energy substations.

Three substations were impacted, according to both Consumers Energy and WOODTV.

Restoration timeline

• 11:20 a.m. — Approximately 10,000 customers without power, according to the Consumers Energy outage map.
• 1:20 p.m. — 10,816 customers still without power, according to WZZM13.
• 2:15 p.m. — Over 2,000 customers had power restored.
• 2:30 p.m. — Two of the three substations were back online, according to WOODTV.
• 3:30 p.m. — Approximately 5,600 customers remained without power.
• 5 p.m. — All power was restored, according to the Consumers Energy outage map.

Consumers Energy initially estimated restoration times ranging from 2:45 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. for affected customers.

Why Memorial Day matters

A power outage on a holiday weekend hits differently than one on a Tuesday. Families were gathered for cookouts. Air conditioners were running through an early summer day. Refrigerators holding holiday meals went dark.

Residents in Grandville and surrounding communities had to wait nearly six hours for their power to come back.

Consumers Energy told reporters that crews worked to reroute customers and complete repairs on the failed tap. The company did not provide an estimated repair cost for the equipment.

What to do if it happens again

Consumers Energy directs customers to its outage map at consumersenergy.com/outagemap for real-time status updates. Customers can also call 866-710-8222 to report an outage.