Morning power outage impacts parts of campus
Sporadic power outages affected portions of campus and downtown Hanover at about8:15 a.m.A DartPulse alert announced the outage at8:25 a.m, and power was restored to most of campus by10:03 a.m.All issues were resolved by 10:52 a.m.
A failure in one of Liberty Utilities' electrical feeders prompted the outage, according to a campus-wide email. Buildings unaffected use a different electrical feeder.
Frank Roberts, associate vice president of Facilities, Operations and Management, alerted campus to the outages and the Liberty Utilities failure at around 11:00 a.m.
After the outage, the western part of campus was placed on an alternate electrical feeder.
An alarm rang at the Thayer School of Engineering around 8:30 a.m. as an indirect consequence of the outage, instructional laboratories director and engineering professor Christopher Levey said. Employees and students waited outside Cummings Hall for over an hour before returning to the building.
Power was restored to the building using an alternate feeder, which showed signs of stress, he said. In order to avoid overwhelming the power line, Thayer employees turned off unnecessary equipment and lights, and laboratories have scaled down their operations, Levey said.
Out of concern for power availability, the Tuck School of Business sent home “non-essential” employees for the day, Tuck facilities director Shelley Wirasnik said. Tuck employees were unsure if the alternate feeder could handle full operations.
The Facilities, Operation and Management office is currently monitoring Tuck’s situation, Wirasnik said.
The outage also impacted local business, causing Morano Gelato to delay opening until noon and Dirt Cowboy Café to rely on cash transactions while without power.