St. George residents asked to limit power use as city enters 'red alert' after outage

ST. GEORGE — St. George officials asked residents to limit their power use after a county-wide outage left tens of thousands without power Thursday night, including over 14,000 Rocky Mountain Power customers in the southwestern tip of the state.

Several residents reported outages lasting into the early morning hours Friday, with most cases lasting several hours.

According to a statement sent to residents by St. George city officials Friday morning, the cause of the power outage was "due to a PacifiCorp regional transformer issue that had temporarily cut (the) main supply," adding that the St. George Energy Services team "routed a smaller backup feed and restored power in careful, gradual steps."

They did this in order to "get the lights back on safely without overloading the grid," while prioritizing critical services, the statement said.

"Today, our local grid is still recovering," the statement continued. "We have issued a red alert and ask all residents to conserve energy today."

Red Alert status means the local power grid is under extreme stress, and city officials said that "if everyone conserves just a little, it makes a massive difference."

Residents were asked to limit power use between the hours of 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., which the city says is its "highest-risk window " due to a solar generation drop-off and evening household demand spikes. Use of heavy appliances, such as dishwashers and laundry machines, should be delayed until after 7 p.m., the city asked.

"We are closely monitoring the grid and have emergency diesel generators ready to deploy if we approach critical limits," the statement continued. "Your collective efforts to reduce usage keep our system stable."

Related topics