The ESB says two power outages in the Edgeworthstown area and surrounds this week are somewhat related.
The explanation comes after thousands of customers in the south Longford area were left without power on two consecutive evenings for an hour or more.
An ESB Networks statement issued this evening says crews carrying out planned essential works on the network in Ballymahon caused extra demand on the local Edgeworthstown network and left it more vulnerable than usual when faults occur.
A transformer fault happened in Edgeworthstown around half past five on Monday evening leaving 3,500 customers without power.
Crews were mobilised immediately and the majority of people had power restored within an hour.
The ESB statement says a separate fault happened on Tuesday evening with suspected fallen trees on the lines from Granard and Ballymahon causing the local network to trip while the Edgeworthstown transformer was temporarily out of service.
This again affected around three and a half thousand customers and most had power supplied within an hour, but some had to wait longer.
The ESB says they are continuing to carry out work on the substation in Edgeworthstown and expect to have a permanent repair to the transformer in place by the weekend to prevent further outages.
They're also apologising to all customers affected by the obvious inconvenience of the two outages this week and thank them for their forbearance.
Several local businesses were badly impacted by the outage on Monday and Tuesday nights with Kiernan Milling manager Gareth Carroll saying it's put a lot of extra pressure on at their busiest time of year.
