August 27, 2019

Southern California Edison (SCE) will performed necessary maintenance on the power transmission systems serving UC Santa Barbara. This work will require a power service interruption (i.e., power outage) to the main campus and all areas served by the campus electrical distribution system. SCE estimates it will take about 12 hours to complete their maintenance work. As soon as the work is completed and power has been restored to the campus, teams from UC Santa Barbara Facilities Management (FM) will check and restore building system(s) functionality (such as elevators, building mechanical systems, Metsys, and lighting). FM anticipates the campus will be fully operational by Sunday afternoon. 

The service interruption is scheduled to begin at 10 p.m. on Saturday, September 14 and campus should be fully operational by afternoon on Sunday, September 15. For your safety, FM recommends you vacate all non-residential buildings by 9 p.m. on Saturday, September 14. 

The planned service interruption will impact UC Santa Barbara properties and facilities only, including all main campus buildings and a number of adjacent housing and dining facilities that receive their electrical power service directly from campus. The map below denotes in yellow the buildings and facilities that will be impacted by the power interruption. 

Faculty housing in the Ocean Walk and West Campus developments are on a separate transmission line and will not be impacted. 

Minimizing the disruption to campus operations was foremost in selecting the dates and hours of the outage, and we recognize there are significant issues related to research, IT, security, and other essential functions that still need to be resolved. 

IT Functionality

  • Turn off all personal office equipment prior to the beginning of the electrical outage. 
  • Desktop computers will not be available during the outage and should be powered down prior to the outage.
  • The campus core network, Domain Name System (DNS) servers, and internet service will be available during the outage. Wireless service will remain available for a minimum of 30 minutes into the power outage. After that time, continued service will depend on the availability of generator power. Individual building network service will vary based on generator power and Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) availability.
  • G Suite tools (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, etc.) will not be impacted by the outage.
  • The campus telephone system will operate on generator and battery back-up power. No disruption is anticipated.
  • All blue-light emergency phones and elevator phones will remain operational. However, the respective blue light will not be powered during the outage.
  • Cell sites have limited battery back-up power and may fail within two to three hours. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have confirmed their intent to bring generators to maintain their cell site services throughout the power outage. Sprint has been notified of the outage and has not indicated whether they will arrange for generator power for their sites.
  • The campus radio system will operate on generator and battery back-up power. No disruption is anticipated.
  • Building access control could be limited and your Access Card may not work. If an Access Card is not working to enter a building during the outage, call UCSB Police at (805) 893-3446 or (805) 893-2000.
  • Voice Over IP (VOIP) and Panasonic DBS phone systems will be impacted. If customers experience issues when power comes back on, they can contact help@commserv.ucsb.edu.
  • Video Security as a Service (VSaaS) aka security cameras could be impacted (except the North Hall Data Center and Library cameras). While service depends on individual building switches and generators, please notify VSaaS customers of potential impacts. 

If you have questions or need to identify areas that may need special attention, please inform your manager or email poweroutage@fm.ucsb.edu.