A brief blackout occurred at UVU due to a surge in a substation, causing power to go out across most of campus south of the Student Life and Wellness Center.
Early in the morning on Feb. 27, power went out at about 8:43 a.m., and remained out until about 8:51 a.m. Within the Pope Science Building, two booms were heard as the power went out, causing confusion and concern.
“All of a sudden, we heard a boom, and the lights and projector and computer all turned off,” Maureen Hintz, lecturer in the physics department, told The Review about how the blackout affected her astronomy class. “The biggest downside was the in-room media projector did not work. Again, the students were troopers and put up with my drawings on the board. Following class, a technician was able to come and fix the room computer for future classes.”
Frank Young, associate VP of facilities planning, told The Review that the outing was due to maintenance on two blown fuses that occurred earlier that morning.
“After replacing the fuses and re-energizing the switch, the substation tripped out due to a surge,” Young said in a statement to The Review. “We restarted the substation and brought the campus buildings back online one at a time to prevent another outage.”
Young also said that the maintenance crews have not noticed any more issues; however, they are continually monitoring any more issues within the grid. Brief flickers were reported in the Liberal Arts building around 12:04 p.m., but more outages have not been reported.
The Review will continue to update as more information becomes available.
