PORTLAND, Ore. – More than 15,700 residents in Northeast Portland woke up in the dark Monday morning after a widespread power outage, with some households waiting nearly a full day for electricity to return.
The Outage
Pacific Power reported the outage just after 5 a.m., announcing that 15,776 customers in Northeast Portland had lost power due to emergency repairs at one of its substations. The outage began around 3:15 a.m., leaving thousands without lights, heating, or internet service.
Initially, Pacific Power estimated that electricity would be restored by 12:30 p.m., but repairs stretched well beyond that deadline. By 9:45 p.m., the utility’s live outage map still showed 2,428 customers in the dark.
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Power was finally restored to all affected customers at 10:21 p.m., nearly 19 hours after the initial disruption.
A Complicated Repair Effort
On Tuesday morning, Pacific Power explained the chain of events that prolonged the outage.
“On Monday, September 1, an equipment issue in one of our substations in NE Portland caused an outage. Customers experienced a disruption in service starting at 3:15 a.m., and we quickly dispatched crews to assess and begin doing emergency repairs,” the company said in a statement.
While crews worked on the initial substation failure, a second problem emerged.
“During the restoration process, another substation in the Hollywood district experienced an equipment issue, requiring crews to dispatch to that substation to make repairs. This impacted restoration efforts on the initial outage,” Pacific Power explained.
The secondary issue created additional delays, forcing crews to divide resources between both substations.
The Hollywood District Outage
The Hollywood substation failure began around 7:15 a.m., affecting another 3,200 customers. Power in that area was restored within about 90 minutes, but the added complication slowed progress on the larger outage in Northeast Portland.
Pacific Power said customers were brought back online gradually, in stages, as repairs were completed.
Cause Under Investigation
The utility has not released details about the exact nature of the equipment failures at either substation. It remains unclear whether the two incidents were connected.
Pacific Power emphasized that the causes are under investigation and pledged to continue reviewing the issues to prevent similar disruptions in the future.
Tracking Outages
For customers, Pacific Power recommends using its live outage map at pacificpower.net/outage to stay updated on service interruptions, estimated restoration times, and repair progress.
The Takeaway
While the lights are back on across Portland, Monday’s outage was a reminder of how vulnerable city infrastructure can be. For thousands of residents, what began as a morning inconvenience stretched into a day-long disruption—one that underscored the challenges of maintaining and repairing an aging electrical grid under pressure.
