Many Goleta residents were left in the dark Wednesday night after a blackout killed the lights in more than 3,000 area homes.

Jane Brown, Southern California Edison public affairs region manager for the greater Santa Barbara area, said a “circuit lockout” occurred at approximately 7:26 p.m., interrupting power to 3,661 customers living in Goleta west of Storke Road.

Brown said automated switching systems quickly re-routed electricity to many homes, cutting the number of customers without power to 1,612 by 10:15 p.m. As of press time, she said the cause of the interruption had not yet been determined.

“We’re not sure what the problem is,” Brown said. “I really couldn’t say how long it will be before it is fixed — it takes as long as it takes.”

Brown said she believed that all but the homes closest to the source of the outage would have power restored by later in the night.

“We do feel pretty confident that the customers’ [power] will all be back on by the morning,” Brown said.