MEMPHIS, Tenn. — MLGW crews worked along Peabody Place and Main Street in downtown Memphis Monday morning following a power outage over the weekend.

The outage was initially noted by some residents around 6 a.m. Sunday and lasted for several hours. The issue happened on a clear, sunny day.

“That’s definitely the weirdest issue. I feel like when most power goes out it’s because of weather,” said Brennan Scheidhauer, who lives downtown.

We were told the disruption caused some downtown restaurants to start scrambling. There were concerns about how long food would stay cold in the refrigerators and freezers. 

As for what caused the problem, an spokesperson with MLGW told us, “Yesterday’s outage is still under review. We are aware of a fire in a manhole at Peabody Place and Main yesterday that damaged cables underground but an exact cause of the outage is yet to be determined.”

The outage was resolved after a few hours. Scheidhauer is thankful it didn’t last too long.

“But just the fact that it has been going off recurrently is kinda troubling,” he said.

He’s referring to another outage exactly a month before that also left businesses and homes in the dark downtown for hours. MLGW told us that was related to equipment issues at a substation. 

“I hope better infrastructure gets in place to make sure this doesn’t happen,” Scheidhauer said.

Investments infrastructure is something MLGW’s CEO and President Doug McGowen said will be happening in the 2024 fiscal year. 

“We’re pleased that we’re going to be able to make significant progress with resilience and reliability in the grid by doing some significant and aggressive tree trimming, replacing dated infrastructure, modernizing our grid,” McGowen said.

WREG is still working to learn more about the cause of the outage.