NEW ORLEANS -- Officials of the utility company supplying power to the Superdome say the Super Bowl outage occurred when sensing equipment detected an "abnormality" in the system.
A statement from Entergy and the Superdome said Sunday that a piece of equipment monitoring electrical load sensed the abnormality and opened a breaker, partially cutting power.
The statement said backup generators kicked in before full power could be restored.
The Super Bowl was delayed for 34 minutes.
Power went out at the Superdome early in the third quarter of the Super Bowl, leading to a 35-minute delay with the Baltimore Ravens leading the San Francisco 49ers 28-6 on Sunday.
The majority of the lights failed shortly after Jacoby Jones returned the opening kickoff of the second half for a touchdown.
Play finally resumed with 13:22 left in the third quarter.
During the outage, the public address announcer said the Superdome was experiencing an interruption of electrical service and encouraged fans to stay in their seats.
Some fans did the wave to pass the time. Players milled around on the sidelines, some took a seat on the bench, other on the field. A few of the Ravens threw footballs around.
Officials gathered on the field and appeared to be talking to stadium personnel. Finally, the lights came back on throughout the stadium, which appeared to have been operating on auxiliary power.
