This week, Monday Night Football fans got an unwelcome surprise. At 5:20 pm Pacific time, tens of thousands of fans were at a sold-out game in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park to watch the San Francisco 49ers play against the Pittsburgh Steelers. That’s when the lights went out — and stayed out for nearly half an hour. A second brief outage struck at 6:43 pm.

What happened — and how might smart metering and energy analytics help avoid such high-profile power problems?…

ESPN reported that a transformer outside the stadium blew up. But Pacific Gas & Electric, as well as the city and county of San Francisco, which are investigating the outage, haven’t yet announced the cause.

Generally speaking, catastrophic transformer failures are caused by cumulative overloading conditions. Sudden, excessive loads tend to cause fuses (rather than transformers) to blow.

Candlestick Park was built in 1960, and transformers deteriorate with age. Overheating breaks down their insulation, eventually causing the high voltage to short out. And then: Boom!

With information from smart metering devices, eMeter’s EnergyIP Analytics Foundation can monitor the total load on a transformer and assess the amount of time it’s operating at or above its load rating. Our tools also provide the information store to report these load conditions, and also to warn when extreme overloads are likely to lead to premature failures.

Before there were smart meters to provide detailed energy usage information, the loading of a given transformer was never known except as an average value. Consequently, overload conditions would go entirely unnoticed until a dramatic event — such as Monday night.

By providing early warnings, EnergyIP can help utilities keep the lights on by managing potential overload conditions, targeting preventative maintenance, and indicating when transformers should be exchanged under routine conditions — not while ESPN is watching!