An extensive power outage occurred Friday, Dec. 7 around midnight and lasted for more than two hours before the lights came back on at around 2:30 a.m. Saturday. The outage came at an inconvenient time for many students who were in the midst of cramming for upcoming finals. SLE students were, in fact, in the middle of their notorious 24-hour final when the lights went off.

According to Manager of Stanford’s Emergency Management program Keith Perry, a malfunctioning Cardinal CoGen transformer in a “critical location” on campus caused the blackout.

Stanford’s power is supplied by a variety of sources. Stanford Hospitals & Clinics (SHC) and some campus residences receive power directly from the city of Palo Alto, while the central core of campus gets its power from one of two other sources: Cardinal CoGen — a General Electric-owned plant — supplies 60 percent of campus power, while the Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) power grid supplies the remaining 40 percent.

Perry said the malfunctioning transformer affected both the CoGen and PG&E-powered parts of campus.

“A little after midnight, a transformer associated with CoGen malfunctioned and took down both the CoGen feed and the PG&E feed to campus simultaneously,” he said. “Normally, the campus has the ability to be fed from either CoGen or PG&E, but this particular transformer was in a critical location and disabled both sources simultaneously.”

Just before 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning — nearly three hours after the blackout began — power was restored to campus by the PG&E power grid, Perry said.

He added that Stanford’s Situation Triage and Assessment Team (STAT) was activated immediately after the lights went out. STAT is comprised of a number of officials who convene during emergencies to determine the University’s course of action.

“We set up an emergency center at the Public Safety facility,” Perry said. “Facilities Operations set up a center at the high voltage shop, and they immediately went to work on the malfunctioning transformer.”

The blackout knocked out nearly all of the lights on West campus, including the lower Row, but did not disrupt activity in parts of East campus. Interestingly, while Wilbur, Stern, Branner, Toyon, and Crothers Memorial were unaffected by the outage, other houses on or near Escondido Road, including Mirrielees, Manzanita, Escondido Village and Rains Houses were all dark during the blackout.

Similarly, the lights in Green Library were knocked out but Meyer’s power remained functional during the spotty outage. Students looking at Hoover Tower would have seen the lights in the top of the iconic building flashing sporadically for hours.

In parts of Lagunita Court, fire alarms were blaring nonstop for up to two hours late Friday and early Saturday. The Fire Department arrived on the scene and told residents they could re-enter the building despite the fact that the alarms were still buzzing.

Because SHC receives its power directly from Palo Alto, Perry said, the Hospital — which would have had thousands of patients relying on electricity-powered life-saving equipment — was unaffected by the blackout.

Perry added that because virtually all of the research buildings on campus are provided with emergency generators, the likelihood that any valuable research was lost as a result of the blackout is low. Perry said that there have yet to be any reports of lost research, but cautioned that the fact that the blackout occurred late on a weekend night means that no one will know the true effects until Monday morning.

“To the best of our knowledge,” Perry said, “the emergency generators in the research buildings activated properly and saved all the research.

“The only impact that we are aware of at this time,” he said, “is with some of the elevators having to be reset by an outside contractor.”