On Mon., Nov. 10, PSU’s core campus area suffered from a power outage. The outage lasted nearly an hour, and it left several campus buildings incapacitated.
“It was all the buildings south of the HUB that are on the campus electrical distribution system. That includes Memorial, Mary Lyon, Rounds, Frost House, the President’s House, Blair, Hall Dorm, Holmes House, Bagley House, Boyd, Lamson, Russell House, Pemi, Belknap and the Child Develop Center,” said Mark Anderson, Physical Plants’ Manager of Maintenance Operations said.
The outage was not expected, nor was it the result of an accident, “The cause was a defective piece of equipment in the electrical distribution system,” Anderson added, “The power was down for about forty-five minutes. This was the amount of time it took for our electricians to get here and troubleshoot the issue.”
Terri Potter and Kerri Keating, the Director and Associate Director of the HUB, respectively were attending a conference in Mass. at the time of the outage. They were able to keep in touch with building managers throughout the ordeal, “We were here [in Mass.] when the outage happened, but my understanding is that the power outage was for all of campus south of High street. While our student building managers did make us aware of the outage, and we communicated with them the strategy for closing and re-opening the HUB,” Potter said in an email.
The HUB was open for 9 a.m. the next morning. The building was observing abbreviated hours for the Veteran’s Day holiday.
“This is the first [power outage] we’ve had this year,” Potter said. Power outages on campus have occurred before, yet are not frequent, “Kerri remembers that we had one outage last year in the spring because of heavy snow, but that’s the only unplanned outage that either of us can remember,” Potter said.
“Prior to last year, I can’t remember the last time we had and outage that wasn’t part of a scheduled maintenance procedure, and I’ve been with the HUB for seventeen years,” Potter said.
Most of the school’s power is generated through the co-generation plant, which is located in front of Langdon Woods, “This electrical problem occurred somewhere between the generators and the buildings,” Anderson said. This lead to the outage being situated only in central campus.
Some buildings on campus are equipped with generators, but these are only for use with emergency operations, ” There are only a few buildings on campus with their own generators. These individual generators are strictly for things like elevators and emergency lights [not complete building power],” Anderson said.
The outage may have been an inconvenience for those who were left in the dark on Mon. night, but everything was back in working order by Tues. morning, “Everything is now in working order. After power was restored our electricians went through all the buildings that were impacted. They made sure all electrical systems and fire alarm systems were operational,” Anderson said.