Equipment failures at the east-campus substation near the Kohl Center caused both the downtown afternoon and evening power outages Monday.

The failures leading to the underground fires may have been due to University of Wisconsin contractors working at the substation.

“The second one was caused by a piece of equipment that was stressed by the first outage,” Steve Kraus, spokesperson for Madison Gas and Electric, said. “When equipment fails, electricity traveling through all of the lines goes to one line or a series of lines which overheated and started on fire.”

According to Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, there are three organizations that use the substation: MGE, American Transition Company and UW. Verveer said according to Gary Wolter, the CEO of MG&E, the university was involved with the problems.

“Walter said all problems were caused by UW-Madison hired contractors working at MGE’s east-campus substation,” Verveer said.

Kraus said workers fixed the problem enough to turn the electricity back on in the downtown area after the first outage, but then equipment at the substation failed again. MG&E workers tested all the equipment at the substation last night and this morning and replaced the gear necessary to put the system back in working order, Kraus added.

Kraus explained the east-campus substation distributes electricity to many different circuits around the city. Even though the substation is near the southeast part of campus, problems were still occurred in the State Street and Langdon Street areas.

All businesses on State Street below the Overture Center were without electricity for a few hours in the afternoon, causing many to close down for the day.

Matt Goetsch, manager of State Street Brats, said the establishment was busy Monday due to the Presidents’ Day holiday. Customers did not seem to mind because it was still light outside when the afternoon power outage occurred. Brats almost closed during the outage, but heard the problem was fixed and would not happen again, Goetsch added.

“Luckily, it was on a Monday, not a Saturday,” Goetsch said, adding the registers did not have any power, so bartenders had to calculate receipts with pens and paper. “After a couple of hours, it gets kind of annoying.”

Goetsch said the blackout caused some infrastructure problems, causing him to worry about the appliances in the kitchen and keeping food inside the refrigerator cold.

Tim Vetter, manager of the Kollege Klub, said the KK had problems with its registers but luckily did not have to throw away any food items.

“In terms of closing down the bar, when we decided to close down for good, we couldn’t open the registers,” Vetter said. “All of the food had been OK because it was only a couple of hours, but any longer and it would have melted and we would have had to throw it all away.”