Progress Energy is planning power outages in areas of Pinehurst on Sunday and Monday.

Officials are completing upgrades to the Pinehurst system, necessitating four four-hour shut-downs of power to different parts of the village serving a total of about 2,000 customers.

During the outages, workers will replace transformers and other hardware outside homes and on poles throughout the village, said Andy Honeycutt, community relations manager for Progress.

"It's the last step," Honeycutt said.

The upgrades caused an unintentional power outage for several hours Aug. 23, when a substation failed.

Upgrades include increasing the voltage and enhancing the distribution lines from the substation to make it compatible with the surrounding system.

What that means, Honeycutt said, is in the event of an outage that Progress should be able to rout power from an adjacent system and get the lights back on more quickly.

The system that serves Pinehurst, called the Pinehurst North electric substation, dates back to the Diamondhead days. It was so old that it couldn't handle the voltage from a nearby system.

"Basically, Pinehurst is an island as far as our system is concerned," Honeycutt said.

Those problems should end with the final work being done Sunday and Monday.

To ensure the safety of technicians, power will be shut off to about 1,900 customers in Pinehurst.

From 7 to 11 a.m. Sunday, power will be off in areas of Murdocksville Road, Moore Regional Hospital and Page Road to Midland Road.

From 1 to 5 p.m., power will be off to the areas of the ManorCare, Rattlesnake Trail and the Pinehurst Village Business District.

From 7 to 11 a.m. Monday, there will be no power to areas of St. Andrews Drive and Linden Road. That afternoon, from 1 to 5 p.m., power will be off to areas of Donald Ross Drive, Barrett Road and the Carolina Hotel.

Progress has attempted to contact all customers affected by letter.

Check Sunday's Pilot and ThePilot.com for the full story.

Matthew Moriarty may be reached at 693-2479 or by e-mail at moriarty@thepilot.com.