A blown transformer on Curry Street knocked out power to 3,200 NV Energy customers in areas of Carson City, Jacks Valley Road, Glenbrook and Zephyr Cove.
Stephanie McCaffrey said technicians were able to transfer users onto another circuit by 5:45 p.m. and are working toward repairing the transformer problem.
Once that's corrected, they intend to transfer customers back to the original source.
McCaffrey said the transfer could cause another brief outage.
Power went out about 4:30 p.m. as reports of an explosion came into the the emergency dispatch center.
Sheriff Ken Furlong said several downtown stoplights were not functioning due to the outage.
He reminded motorists that if they happen upon a non-working stoplight they are required to treat to it as a four-way stop.