Tens of thousands of people in south, west, and midtown Anchorage were without power for less than an hour Sunday evening. Municipal Light and Power spokesperson Julie Harris says the outage started at the Southcentral Power Plant near Minnesota and International Airport Drive.
“The cause of why it tripped is still under investigation,” said Harris.
Electrical power companies along the railbelt from Homer to Fairbanks plug into the same grid. Julie Hasquet, a spokesperson for Chugach Electric spokesperson, says the system was rebooted to prevent extensive damage.
"When it go to Chugach, we realized there was too much load on the system," said Hasquet. "So in order to prevent a massive power outage, we take the substations down systematically then reboot them back up and it keeps the integrity in the system."
The outage started at about 7:15 and power was restored by 8 p.m.