The damaged arrester was the apparent source of the power outage.

Several of the buildings failed to automatically switch to backup generator power, so getting the emergency generators working was a priority. Freezers, refrigerators, and cooling systems are priorities to protect research and data and need to be on a backup generator when power is lost. As those assets were being protected, other teams worked to investigate the cause of the failure and develop a plan to safely restore power.  

Shortly before 8 p.m., power was restored to the buildings on the hillside that had lost it. But that doesn’t mean they could be occupied. HVAC and other critical systems had to be manually restarted one building at a time. By 11 p.m., the teams cleared all but five buildings for occupancy. The remaining five buildings were cleared for occupancy Sunday by 1:30 p.m.

The design of the Lab’s electrical system is antiquated and is being upgraded as part of the Linear Asset Modernization Project, LAMP. The current system consists of two electrical feeds from PG&E, with each feed providing power to roughly half of the Lab.  The blown arrester meant only one of the feeds was supplying power. The Lab’s high-voltage electricians entered the Lab’s Grizzly substation and redirected the system to bypass the blown arrester. This allowed for the re-energization of the buildings that were without power. The LAMP project will provide a more resilient electrical system that will decrease the number of single points of failure. 

It took many people working together from Operations and Research, to bring the Lab back to normal operating conditions. Some of the teams that were part of the effort included:

• Building managers
• CIMG members
• Environment Health & Safety 
• Facilities, including PMTs, fire alarm technicians, HVAC team, electricians, FMCs
• IT Infrastructure Services and High-Performance Computing 
• Mission Support Officers
• Security and Emergency Services, including emergency management, site security, fire protection and engineering