Cause for outage undetermined, but power restored

CLOVIS — Power has been restored to about 3,400 Xcel Energy customers in west Clovis.

The power went out about 9:15 a.m. Thursday and was out until about 10:45 a.m.

Those impacted included 11 public schools, including Clovis High.

School officials said students remained in class during the outage.

A school news release said district officials “closely monitored the situation,” and the primary concern was related to food preparation.

“Student Nutrition worked in collaboration with the New Mexico Department of Health to monitor preparation and storage during the power outage,” the news release said.

“Families should be aware that in some cases minor changes to menu offerings were made to compensate for the loss of power, however all schools will be able to serve cooked lunches today.”

Xcel Energy spokesman Wes Reeves said “protective devices” detected a fault, resulting in the power outage.

“The last report says they rerouted power around the West Clovis Substation and that is how they got the customers restored,” he wrote in an email at 10:50 a.m.

He said the cause of the outage had not been determined, “but it apparently is a malfunction of some sort at that particular substation.”