PEMBERVILLE, Ohio — It was a dark day for those in the Village of Pemberville but it wasn't all because of the gloomy weather.
For a few hours, Pemberville was without power so the village could get a new substation. For the last year, the village has run on one substation as they build a new one.
"We're putting our north substation back online today," Carol Bailey, the Mayor of the Village of Pemberville said. "We're powering up all the new and balancing it with the other substation."
Bailey said the village's previous substation was 70 to 80 years old so they had to build a new one. To get the power up and running, the power had to be turned off for a few hours. While it's inconvenient to have the power turned off for a time, it's better than an unplanned outage.
"An unscheduled shutdown is a threat. We need that redundancy between the two substations," Bailey said. "We just need to keep our infrastructure up to date so that we can function."
The village gave people a heads-up on the maintenance, giving local business owners like Todd Sheets a chance to prepare.
"We had notification, the village certainly tried to help us out," Sheets, who owns Beeker's in downtown Pemberville, said. "Of course, it's never a great time. Thank goodness it's not super cold today."
Most of the businesses downtown were closed and people took advantage of the warmer weather and went outside of town. But those who stayed were able to cope.
"We've had a lot of folks that had scheduled pickups for today. I think the word is out so there isn't a lot of traffic, but we are here for those that had orders and pickups," Sheets said. "Of course, then we'll be here when the power comes back on."
Because Mayor Bailey believes that people understand what needs to be done to keep Pemberville running.
"I think people just understand what it's going to take to make this right," Bailey said. "And are willing to make that sacrifice for one day to keep Pemberville powered for the future."