"El Paso Airport electrical outage a mystery"

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Airport outage a mystery
By Vic Kolenc
The El Paso (TX) Times


The cause of Sunday's 3 1/2-hour power outage at El Paso International
Airport is still being investigated, El Paso Electric officials said.

The outage, which occurred from 9:30 a.m. to about 1 p.m., came on what
probably was the airport's busiest day of the year, caused flight delays and
huge lines going to the airport's security checkpoint. 

The airport operated some systems with backup generators. An estimated
15,000 people passed through the airport Sunday.

It was back to business as usual Monday, said Pat Abeln, the airport's
director of aviation. The airport was not affected Monday by some
weather-related flight delays on the East Coast, he said.

The airport has had three or four power outages in the past seven years, but
not "quite as long as this one and one occurred in the middle of the night
with no impact," Abeln said. 

El Paso Electric officials Monday morning blamed the outage on a faulty
underground electric cable near the Cattle Baron restaurant near the
airport. In the afternoon, Ernie Martinez, the company's superintendent of
distribution systems, said it was caused by a burned out fuse on a
transformer within the airport's power system, which is not controlled by El
Paso Electric. Then, late in the day, the company said it didn't know the
cause.

"We know our equipment operated the way it should, and nothing was wrong
with the equipment," said Teresa Souza, an El Paso Electric spokeswoman.
Initially, the company thought the underground cable was the cause, but
"further investigation found nothing wrong," she said.

"We will get a group together of our people and their (airport) people to
try to find out what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again," Souza
said.

Martinez said El Paso Electric is about a month away from completing a
$750,000 upgrade of power lines and other equipment for the power system
feeding the airport. The upgrade includes a switch where the El Paso
Electric system meets the airport's system. That will make it easier to
isolate future power problems and make it faster to switch the airport to a
backup power line if needed, Martinez said.

The airport also had a short power outage Saturday, which caused no
problems, Abeln said. The cause of that outage also is being investigated,
Souza said.

Abeln said a fuse burned out on a transformer supplying power to the
airport's heating and cooling system shortly after power was restored to the
airport Sunday afternoon. The airport located a new fuse at UTEP, and
replaced it about 7 p.m. Sunday, he said.

During Sunday's outage, backup generators provided some power for equipment
needed to operate flights. The backup at the security checkpoint was due to
a delay in backup power getting routed to the checkpoint, Abeln said.


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