A squirrel or some other electrical interrupter picked a particularly inconvenient time to stray onto the city's electrical grid on Tuesday. A second outage occurred Wednesday afternoon.

The city of Powell's electrical substation was being inspected early Tuesday afternoon when “probably a squirrel or something” caused a bump in current and knocked out power across Powell, said City Electric Superintendent Larry Carter.

One of the city's two transformers at the Vining Substation on the corner of Seventh and Ingalls streets had been shut down as a contractor tested the equipment, Carter said.

Each of the transformers can handle the city's electrical demands on its own, but the surge pushed the current too high and tripped the protective device on the transformer operating at the time, Carter said. That led to an outage at around 1:45 p.m.

Power was restored about 10 minutes later, Carter said.

Wednesday's outage, which occurred at 12:51 p.m., was very similar to Tuesday's situation, Carter said. It lasted a couple of minutes.

Crews will be working at the substation all week, he said. Carter added that he hopes no more outages occur during this week's electrical work.

He said the city has its substation inspected periodically, having the electrical relays and equipment tested.

“You have to do it, but what do you do?” he asked.