TEMPORARY power supplier Aggreko has confirmed it was not to blame for the lights going out at the showpiece Superbowl in New Orleans.
The National Football Championship title decider was delayed more than 30 minutes after monitoring equipment detected a power surge and cut the power. That caused half of the lights in the Superdome stadium to go off.
Yesterday, Glasgow-based Aggreko said it was respon-sible for the CBS and inter-national broadcasting compound as well as much of the half-time show, which featured a performance by Beyonce. All of those sections operated with no outages.
Aggreko provided 15 megawatts of electricity, with a crew of 20 on site.
Asterios Satrazemis, president for the Americas at Aggreko, said: "It is always an honour to be part of such a major global sporting event and we are proud the service we provided remained robust."
It is the 23rd year in a row Aggreko has been involved in the Superbowl.
US-based power supplier Entergy Corporation and Superdome management company SMG said they were still investigating why the power had gone off.
Electrical load sensing equipment was said to have detected an abnormality in the power supply. That monitoring equipment then operated as it was meant to and partially cut power to the stadium.
In a joint statement, the companies added: "Back-up generators kicked in immediately as designed. Entergy and SMG subsequently co-ordinated start- up procedures, ensuring 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."
Caroline de La Soujeole, from broker Seymour Pierce, said: "If anything, this incident serves as a reminder of the need for back-up power at such high-profile sporting events."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article