Power outage hits campus

A faulty cogeneration breaker caused a short power outage Wednesday afternoon in some central campus buildings and temporarily knocked out service to the chilled water and steam systems.

The outage occurred just after noon with an unexpected tripping of the cogeneration breaker that opened the main breaker to Panama substation, said Robert Carpenter, associate director of facilities operations. The outage affected the Main Quad buildings, Wilbur and Stern Halls, the Graduate School of Business and Terman Engineering.

Power was restored within 30 minutes and the chilled water and steam systems came back online shortly afterwards.