A power outage took place at the University of Connecticut Storrs campus early Thursday morning, beginning around 12:45 a.m. The university sent a UConn Alert notification at 6:12 a.m., announcing a delayed opening due to the outage.
The notification stated that all in-person classes starting before 10 a.m. on Thursday would be canceled. Classes after 10 a.m. were instructed to resume as normal.
The first UConn Alert was sent to the university community an hour earlier, at 5:11 a.m. The notification informed recipients that an outage had occurred on the Storrs campus and that restoration efforts were in progress.
According to a university statement, the power was interrupted after a tree collapsed onto the main utility line that connects UConn to the energy company Eversource around 12:45 a.m. The demand on the campus’ electric grid exceeded the capacity of the university’s cogeneration plant, leading to the outage.
“Weather events resulted in a large tree collapsed onto the main utility line connecting UConn to Eversource power around 12:45 a.m. This resulted in protective devices opening the electric circuit which supplies campus. The demand on the electric grid on campus exceeded the generation capacity of our COGEN [Cogeneration Plant] facility resulting i[n] a series of cascading power interruptions,” the statement read.
According to the UConn Facilities Operations website, the plant’s electric capacity is 24.9 megawatts per hour.
Eversource worked with Asplundh, a company that conducts emergency storm work, to remove the tree and restore the utility power supply around 7 a.m., according to the statement. Around 1 p.m., the campus was fully restored to its normal operation.
“By 7:05 a.m. while Eversource and Asplundh worked to remove the tree from the utility line, conduct repairs, and reenergize the utility power supply. The campus was fully restored to normal operation around 1 p.m.,” the statement read.
According to the university, the UConn Cogeneration facility and Eversource brought back power as quickly and safely as they could.
“Our electrical and COGEN facility worked diligently in cooperation with Eversource to reestablish power in the quickest possible safe manner. Our COGEN facility was restarted and supplied campus demand,” read the statement.