Stanford power outage knocks out about 30 buildings around Main Quad for nearly five hours

A power outage shut down a large part of Stanford's central campus Tuesday morning, Oct. 27. Classes were canceled or moved, a dining hall closed, and residents of several student houses had no working kitchens for most of the day.

What happened

Stanford's AlertSU system posted a community advisory Tuesday morning: "A power outage is affecting portions of the Stanford campus." It directed people to the university's emergency information site. The Stanford Daily reported that the first AlertSU notice went out at 9:20 a.m., with instructions following at 10:39 a.m. Classes in the roughly 30 affected buildings were told to cancel or relocate. Power came back at 2:04 p.m., the Daily reported, and operations then returned to normal.

Which buildings were hit

According to the Daily, the outage mainly hit Main Quad and the area around it, including the Peterson Laboratory to the south and Encina Hall to the east. Branner Dining and Olives Cafe closed for the length of the outage, while other dining halls stayed open. The Cowell Cluster residences also lost power, including Kappa Kappa Gamma, Kappa Alpha Theta, Pi Beta Phi, Alpha Phi and 539 Cowell Lane. Their residents received an extra dining hall pass because their kitchens were down.

"Nothing was working, only the backup lights," one Kappa Alpha Theta resident told the Daily. She said her clothes were stuck mid-wash. A residential assistant at Kappa Kappa Gamma said food in the house's student fridge had to be thrown out because the power was off so long.

Why it matters

As of the Daily's report early Thursday, there was no public explanation for the outage, and the paper said it had reached out to the university and to Stanford Energy System Innovations. The Daily notes that Stanford manages much of its heating and cooling in-house through its Central Energy Facility. The university gets its electricity from the state grid, distributed across campus through an on-site substation at that facility.

The university's AlertSU advisory pointed the campus to Stanford's emergency information site for updates.