Widespread power outages plagued parts of Anchorage and Eagle River late Monday night, but power was restored to most customers by around midnight.
The outage was triggered when Chugach Electric Association's Southcentral Power Project tripped offline, according to a post on the company's site. That removed about 180 megawatts of generating capacity from the Railbelt electrical grid, causing the outages. In response, the company said it brought additional power-generating capability from its Beluga Power Plant, located near Tyonek on the west side of Cook Inlet.
Chugach said power was restored to all its customers by 11:30 p.m. Crews from the company were investigating what caused the Southcentral Power Project to trip offline, Chugach wrote.
Matanuska Electric Association said in a Facebook post that the incident occurred at about 10:29 p.m. and affected some 8,500 of its customers in Eagle River, Chugiak and Birchwood, as well as in the Fairview and Knik-Goose Bay areas. Power was restored to MEA customers at about midnight.
Some Municipal Light and Power customers were also briefly affected by the outage, that company said.