On February 8, 2013, Entergy New Orleans, Inc. (“Entergy”) issued a press release announcing that it had discovered the cause of the power outage during the Super Bowl – an electrical relay device.  Entergy explained in its press release that the relay is a device designed to “protect equipment in the event of a cable failure between the switch gear and the stadium.”

Entergy announced that while the relay device operated without issue during several recent events at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, during the Super Bowl “the relay device triggered, signaling a switch to open when it should not have, causing the partial outage.”

Entergy also announced that it believes it has discovered why the relay device triggered and corrected the issue.  The relay device in question has since been removed from operation.

A copy of Entergy’s press release is available here.