Power company takes blame for Super Bowl blackout

The company that supplied electricity to the Super Bowl in New Orleans took the blame Friday for the power outage that brought the big game to a halt, explaining that a device designed specifically to prevent a blackout failed and plunged the game into darkness for more than half an hour. The device called a relay had been installed as part of a project begun in 2011 to upgrade the electrical system serving the Superdome in anticipation of the Super Bowl. It was supposed to guard against problems in the cable that links the power grid with lines that go into the stadium. “The purpose of it was to provide a newer, more advanced type of protection for the Superdome,” Dennis Dawsey, an executive with Entergy Corp., told members of the City Council. – AP