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LAUGHLIN — The lights — and the air conditioning — went out for approximately 4,000 NV Energy customers in Laughlin’s residential area Monday afternoon, at a time when the temperature reached 105 degrees.
It was unknown whether the lack of air conditioning resulted in any heat-related illnesses.
According to Kelly Mulroy, spokesperson for NV Energy, the outage occurred at 1:30 p.m. and lasted until 3:15 p.m. The cause of the outage was equipment failure, she said.
Some NV Energy customers reported a brownout — a reduction in power — rather than a complete loss of electricity. This was evidenced by some lights remaining on, albeit at a dimmer setting, while others were off altogether.
Additionally, some appliances continued to run during the brownout while others that required larger amounts of power remained off, as they would during a blackout.
Electric utilities — especially those in the Eastern United States — have been known to initiate rolling brownouts during emergencies or during times of extreme heat and electrical consumption, to reduce the load on the electrical grid system.
Mulroy categorically denied that Monday’s event was a brownout, but she was unable to explain the reason for the conditions described by several customers.
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