NEW ULM – The south side of New Ulm briefly lost power around 2:30 p.m. Thursday after a substation breaker was tripped.

The outage impacted properties from at least S. 7th Street to the Kraft plant on Bridge St. and lasted for about 15 minutes.

Following restoration of power, New Ulm Utilities Director Kris Manderfeld confirmed the outage was caused by a tripped breaker on the south side substation.

Manderfeld said usually outages like this occur on the distribution line, it is rare to see a breaker at a substation go down.

After the outage was reported, a substation tech was dispatched to determine the problem. Following an inspection of the equipment, the breaker was reset and power was restored without further incident. The breakers are designed to trip if there is a problem on the system. This could be an overload or a mechanical failure. At this time it does not appear to be the result of a mechanical failure, but utilities is continuing to inspect the equipment.