Los Alamos Townsite Power Outage Traced to Damaged Transformer, Restored Overnight

A damaged transformer along Trinity Drive west of Oppenheimer cut power to parts of the Los Alamos townsite Thursday night, leaving crews working through the night before the outage was fully cleared by 8 a.m. Friday, May 9. Los Alamos County said standby crews were dispatched at about 9:40 p.m. after signs pointed to a transformer problem in the Trinity and Timber Ridge area.

By 10:35 p.m., the county said crews had found the damaged transformer and urged motorists to avoid the Trinity Drive and Oppenheimer area so repairs could be done safely. At 11 p.m., power had been restored in some areas, while line crews continued restoring service to the rest of the townsite. The county said the work remained a live utility response as crews assessed the extent of the damage.

Los Alamos County Department of Public Utilities reported the next morning that power had been restored to all areas of the townsite. The outage hit a dense part of Los Alamos where homes, nearby services and commuter traffic sit close together, making even a localized failure disruptive for residents trying to keep lights on, food refrigerated and evening routines running. A local op-ed the next day said many households lost lights, internet service, electric stovetops and garage doors during the blackout.

The county’s utility system is central to that response. DPU provides electric, gas, water and sewer service to county residents and businesses, and also supplies wholesale electric and water services to Los Alamos National Laboratory. County outage guidance says residents who rely on electrically powered medical devices should have a power-outage plan and enroll in DPU’s medical-equipment alert list. It also recommends flashlights, extra batteries, carbon-monoxide detectors with battery backups and checking on neighbors during outages.

The Townsite outage also revived an old question for Los Alamos residents: whether this was an isolated equipment failure or another sign of broader reliability trouble in the same part of town. In 2021, a Townsite outage followed a loss of power at LANL’s substation and required the area to be re-energized one circuit at a time. This week’s damaged transformer puts the focus back on how quickly the county can isolate a failure, keep residents informed and harden the system before the next outage hits.