By Mark Wineka

mark.wineka@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Power on. Power off.

For a second consecutive day, a couple thousand Duke Energy customers were without power in a scheduled outage that began around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday while the company repaired a transformer.

Randy Welch, district manager for Duke Energy, said the outage area was  the same as the one Monday night, and again the power was expected to be off to widespread sections for about two hours.

Welch said Duke Energy crews made repairs to a major transformer in the substation off Arlington Street Monday night, and that work also included setting up a temporary transformer to get the power back on.

Duke notified customers again Tuesday to expect the outage, and the city of Salisbury and Downtown Salisbury Inc. also sent out alerts.

Monday’s outage was widespread, affecting about 2,000 Duke Energy customers. It knocked out traffic signals at several major intersections along East and West Innes streets and blacked out a large commercial area on East Innes Street from Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue to Long Street.

In addition, extensive areas along Fulton, Ellis, Craige, Long, Jackson, Bank, Main and Liberty streets were affected. Neighborhoods such as Brooklyn-South Square, Park Avenue and the West Square seemed predominantly hit.

Welch said Duke was trying to take advantage of the clear weather in recent days to make the important transformer repairs. Tuesday night, Duke crews were switching back to the primary transformer.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.