On Sunday, Oct. 19, a power outage occurred in various locations
throughout the Saint Louis University campus. In order to repair
the situation, AmerenUE, the electricity supplier to SLU’s campus,
had to turn off the electrical power to the Griesedieck Complex and
21 other buildings on campus at various times during the week.

The source of this problem occurred at the substation that feeds
SLU’s electrical power.

“Right now, AmerenUE has a temporary transformer mounted on our
substation,” said Keith McCune, building services supervisor. This
particular substation has been under repair and, therefore, is
currently running on a trailer mounted transformer. On the evening
of the Oct. 19, the trailer-mounted transformer on the substation
transformer–which keeps SLU’s electricity running–shut down.

Griesedieck Complex was the only residence hall affected by this
problem. To fix these problems, AmerenUE brought in a generator on
Tuesday, Oct. 21, to keep the Griesedieck complex electricity
running. This was done so that AmerenUE could work on the temporary
transformer that failed.

In all, there were two power outages in the Griesedieck complex
on Wednesday, Oct. 22, and the next day, to allow Ameren UE to set
up and take down the generator behind the building complex.

On Thursday, from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., AmerenUE shut off the power
in 21 buildings on the north end of campus so they could work on
the temporary power transformer.

The trailer-mounted transformer on the substation transformer
that feeds electricity to part of SLU’s campus has been temporarily
fixed.

“The trailer-mounted substation is still a temporary solution.
Sometime in mid-December they will be putting a permanent
transformer in place,” McCune said.