Power Outage Hits Lab; Transformer Failure Suspected

Thanks to the quick work of the Berkeley Lab plant maintenance staff, a power outage that threatened to shut down half the laboratory for an extended period of time yesterday afternoon was limited to under three hours. What officials believe may have been a power transformer failure in the primary substation bank knocked out electricity to 26 buildings at about 12:30 p.m.

Electrical engineers then worked aggressively to switch power to the secondary bank of transformers, reactivating four electricity service zones one-by-one until full power was restored at about 3:15 p.m. The cause of the outage is still being investigated.

When the blackout occurred, initial estimates were for no restoration of service for up to 12 hours. Based on that scenario, Berkeley Lab Director Steve Chu authorized that all non-essential staff in the affected buildings could leave work early, with their supervisors’ approval.

Meanwhile, the Laboratory’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) was activated, and plans were initiated to assess any potential damages, dispatch repair crews, and arrange for the orderly departure of affected employees. Public address announcements and building managers kept staff up to date with status reports in lieu of inaccessible Internet and e-mail systems. Entrance to the Lab during the outage was controlled. As of this morning, no damage or residual hazards were reported from the outage.

Reconnection of all server systems by the Information Technology Division was established early last evening.

Any continuing problem with power or systems reconnection should be reported to the Work Request Center at [email protected], or X6274.