Dive Summary:
- Entergy hired John Palmer, president of Palmer Engineering & Forensics in Kaysville, Utah, to evaluate the cause behind the blackout at the Superdome during Super Bowl XLVII this year, and Palmer's report on Thursday blamed a design defect in a faulty relay device.
- Entergy, which operates the stadium's power, had installed the device in question specifically to avoid such an outage.
- Further testing has shown that the relay device hasn't been performing as its instructional manual said it was supposed; the default setting of the device was "inappropriate."
From the article:
"... 'We are pleased that Dr. Palmer's independent analysis has verified the root cause of the outage and confirmed that the relay operated in an unintended and unpredictable manner,' said Charles Rice, president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans. 'It has been our objective all along to identify the cause of the outage, learn from it, and prevent such an occurrence from happening again. The device has been permanently removed from service.' ..."