White House
The White House briefly lost power following an outage Tuesday in Washington. Reuters

UPDATE 2:05 p.m. EDT: Pepco, a D.C. utility company, said "an issue with a transmission line" caused a dip in voltage shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday and that there was "never a loss of permanent electic supply":

UPDATE 1:49 p.m. EDT: SMECO said in a tweet it was investigating the cause of the power outages that left parts of Washington without power:

Original story:

Areas of downtown Washington experienced power outages Tuesday, including the White House and the Justice, State and Energy departments, CNN reported. Early indications were that terrorism did not cause the loss of power, according to Reuters. While the power came back at the White House, other buildings and areas in the district were still without electricity as of 1:40 p.m. EDT, including the Dupont Circle Metro subway station, one of the city's busiest train stops.

An explosion at the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative, a utility company, is believed to have sparked the outage, Washington Post reporter Aaron C. Davis tweeted:

IBTimes senior political reporter Ginger Gibson contributed reporting from Washington.

This is a breaking news story. Stay tuned for updates.