Sunday night’s power outage was one of the more surreal moments in Super Bowl history, but it isn’t one that will negatively impact New Orleans’ chance of hosting the game again in the future.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said at his Monday press conference that the league has every intention of returning to the city for future Super Bowls despite the loss of power that wound up delaying the game 34 minutes in the third quarter. Albert Breer of the NFL Network reports that he said the league wants to be back in New Orleans and that the overall week was one he considers a success.
The reasons for the power outage are still being investigated. Entergy and SMG, the management company for the Super Dome released a statement about it.
“Shortly after the beginning of the second half of the Super Bowl in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, a piece of equipment that is designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality in the system. Once the issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed and opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order to isolate the issue. Backup generators kicked in immediately as designed. Entergy and SMG subsequently coordinated start up procedures, ensuring that full power was safely restored to the Superdome. The fault-sensing equipment activated where the Superdome equipment intersects with Entergy’s feed into the facility. There were no additional issues detected. Entergy and SMG will continue to investigate the root cause of the abnormality.”