The power outages

So the film made a big thing out of the power going out in the entire town prior to each murder like it was some sort of important clue. There's even a scene near the end where some schlub at the power plant gets a phone call and exasperates that he's pumping out something like 700 kilowatts of electricity and cannot understand why the town has no power. Were the power outages ever explained? I really do not have the energy to go back and re-watch the film to figure it out.