Crews restore power in Wake after transformer fire

Progress Energy brought power back to 11,000 customers who sere left without electricity Sunday night after a transformer fire broke out.

Scott Sutton, a spokesman for Progress Energy, said the power outage began at 9 p.m., hitting northeastern Wake County with a blackout. About 8,000 customers in the Rolesville area lost power, as did an additional 3,000 in Knightdale.

Knightdale had power by 11:30 p.m. Sunday, Sutton said, while Rolesville went online again at 1 a.m. today.

Progress Energy is still investigating the fire, with one possible cause being lightning. In the meantime, the company has closing the burned substation for safety reasons. A mobile transformer is being tested this morning as a temporary fix, Sutton said, and the investigation into the fire's cause should conclude in one or two days.

"We appreciate everyone's patience while we dealt with the fire," Sutton said. "Customers should not have any further outages."

Three customers in Wake County were still without power, Sutton said, although the cause for their outages were unrelated to the fire.