A city-related power issue caused several buildings at Texas State University’s San Marcos campus to lose electricity on Wednesday, Dec. 11.
Associate Vice President for Facilities at Texas State Dan Costello said 45 buildings lost power from around 9:30 p.m. to 11:45 p.m.
The city of San Marcos supplies electricity to Texas State through multiple feeders. According to Costello, the university lost connection to one of its main feeders, cutting power to Trauth-Huffman Hall and all buildings east of it.
“We have an electrician who was communicating with the city because we wanted to understand where the problem was and about how long we needed to be prepared for,” Costello said. “…A large number of our buildings are on emergency backup generators and those generators are designed to provide backup power for Fire & Life Safety Systems like elevators.”
In an email sent to The Star, San Marcos Communications wrote the outage also affected areas around East Hopkins Street.
“The power outage occurred due to a failed jumper, which caused a circuit to go out for one phase. The outage impacted areas around E. Hopkins Street, including mainly businesses, Texas State University and some apartment complexes,” the email read.
Texas State is equipped with 36 backup generators that power Fire & Life Safety Systems as well as critical research equipment, such as the Freeman Aquatic Biology Building and Alkek Library, Costello said.
While Texas State has about 8-12 power outages a year, Costello said the Dec. 11 outage was the largest non-weather related outage he has seen in his three years at Texas State.
“I haven’t seen an unplanned outage like this, unrelated to a weather event since I’ve been here, so I would say that this was unusual,” Costello said. “This type of outage is normally associated with extreme weather like the May storm.”
All Texas State buildings currently have electricity and the city repaired the feeder so there should not be another power outage anytime soon. Costello said the outage resulted in no damages.
In the event of another power outage at Texas State, Costello explained that a protocol is in place. It includes working with the university cabinet to decide on a campus shutdown if the outage extends beyond one day.
“Once we understood where the problem was, we had anticipated time to have the feeder restored, and we had staff available to bring the building systems back online and make sure everything was operating correctly, and we confirmed that all of our generators were running. So I think we followed our procedures very well,” Costello said.
Several buildings on Texas State University’s San Marcos campus experienced power outages starting around 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 11.
One of those buildings is Alkek Library which shut down four hours early due to the outage affecting the facility.
Tatyana Evans, Alkek night manager, said they had everyone evacuate the library at approximately 9:25 p.m. when the power went out.
“We’re going to be closed for the rest of the night and fingers crossed that the power is back on tomorrow,” Evans said.
Evans said Alkek only has the backup generator turned on currently.
The library was supposed to be open until 1 a.m. on Dec. 11 for finals week.
According to Evans, most buildings on the east side of campus also lost power as the east power grid is down.
IT Assistance Center (ITAC) sent an email to faculty, staff and students regarding the outage at 11: 33 p.m. on Dec. 11.
“We are currently experiencing power outages throughout campus. This is causing intermittent access to network, internet and other Texas State services. We appreciate your patience as we work to restore services as soon as possible,” the email read.
ITAC recommends anyone with questions to contact them at 512-245-4822.
Among the buildings that lost power is San Jacinto Hall on Woods Street. Addison Pozzi, San Jacinto Hall resident and consumer affairs freshman, said she was sitting in the living room with her friends when the lights suddenly went out at around 9:30 p.m.
“We saw a little bit of emergency lights that were still on but the entire building went out, so we went to Jones [Dining Hall] to get some food and Jones is also out,” Pozzi said.
Pozzi said it is inconvenient for this to happen during finals week.
“Our RA didn’t say anything and everyone is wondering if that means our finals are canceled because some of us have [exams] at 8 a.m.,” Pozzi said.
