Athens Utilities crews worked throughout Friday to try to determine what knocked out power Thursday night to 5,000 electrical customers.

Electric Department Manager Gary Scroggins said Friday that they believe the outage, which disrupted power from about 8 p.m. to 8:45 p.m., was a fault on a circuit.

“We know that one of the circuits had a fault coming into the station,” said Scroggins. “We don’t know if it was caused by a bird or a squirrel, but apparently the fault was close in to the station because it caused the breaker that protects the whole station to operate, and it took it out.”

The main electrical station is on Clinton Street, near U.S. 72.

Scroggins said he believes the outage was not caused by the high power demand of Thursday’s 95-degree temperatures.

Athens Electric Department experienced its all-time peak demand on July 19 with 215 megawatts of output. Scroggins had predicted that Thursday’s demand would break that record.

“We reached our peak between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. with 211 megawatts, but the power went out close to 8,” he said.

Scroggins said that apparently Tennessee Valley Authority’s calls for electric customers to cut usage helped.

“We thought we would set a new peak, but when people voluntarily reduced usage, it must have worked.”

Customers in the eastern part of the county near Limestone Correctional Facility have complained that they have had power outages for three consecutive evenings this week. Scroggins said he did not believe the outages were caused directly by the increased load. However, he said the increased demand may have put a strain on insulators damaged in the most recent electrical storm and blew them out.

“It was a different cause every night,” said Scroggins. “We’re having people now going pole-to-pole. The mostly likely cause is bad insulators, but we are checking grounders.”

Meanwhile, on Friday afternoon crews were kept busy by several downed power lines throughout the county. High winds that swept through the area shortly after 3 p.m. knocked limbs onto lines and brought them down.