CHARLOTTE AMALIE — A major district-wide power outage closed schools and disrupted life for Virgin Islanders on St. Thomas, St. John, and Water Island on Wednesday, as the V.I. Water and Power Authority struggled to repair its poorly maintained, aging infrastructure.
Residents lost power at around 7 a.m. amid a severe thunderstorm, and WAPA issued an alert: “Damage caused by a lightning strike caused this interruption. Repairs necessary for restoration will be delayed due to the current storm.”
At 9:47 a.m., WAPA issued another alert that “while weather has cleared, restoration of electrical service remains challenging due to flooding. WAPA plant personnel are actively troubleshooting generation units to expedite the process. We appreciate your patience as our personnel work diligently and safely to bring power back online.”
More than 20,000 customers remained without power in the district throughout the morning, according to WAPA’s online outage viewer, and some feeders began to be restored around noon.
The V.I. Education Department announced a delayed opening in the district due to the storm, before closing schools entirely because of the prolonged WAPA outage. The Human Services Department also closed Head Start classrooms due to the inclement weather, and St. Croix district schools closed at noon as the storm moved south.
The V.I. Health Department closed offices that remained without electricity at 11 a.m., the Bureau of Motor Vehicles delayed opening, the Government Employees Retirement System delayed opening until 10 a.m., and WAPA customer service offices delayed opening until noon.
“As of 12:29pm all feeders were restored within the district with the exception of Feeder 6B which was restored at 3:20pm. I hope to provide more details on the timeline of events of today as we continue to conduct repairs as the weather permits and restore pocket outages,” WAPA spokeswoman Shanell Petersen said in response to questions from The Daily News.
WAPA CEO Andrew Smith did not respond to an interview request.
The disruptions come after a similar outage on St. Croix on Friday, which “was initially caused by extreme weather conditions which resulted in a loss of generation,” according to a news release from WAPA. “After further investigating, WAPA Plant personnel identified that a fault was detected on the transformer which initiated the protection scheme, which is designed to protect WAPA’s assets from damage. WAPA personnel are gathering data for the root cause analysis to make a final determination on the cause of the outage and necessary steps to prevent future outages.”
In the St. Thomas-St. John district on Sunday, Unit 23 tripped, “leading to further electrical interruptions,” and rain made it difficult to conduct repairs, according to WAPA. “Though it is commonly known that torrential weather can impact the safety of our linemen, similarly flooding and other wet/high wind conditions can create an extremely hazardous work environment for employees at the power plant. Despite the delays caused by the weather, diagnostic assessments were conducted to identify and address the underlying issues that caused the loss of generation.”
The statement added that, “The existing electrical infrastructure across the Territory has faced challenges as a result of aging components and deferred maintenance due to financial constraints. This has contributed to the frequency of equipment failures and service interruptions.”
WAPA is working to conduct grid repairs, upgrades, and increase the use of renewable energy sources. But the grid is still relying on Unit 23 and other large, aging generators that have suffered a lack of preventative maintenance over the years.
The Harley plant’s largest generating unit, Unit 23 is a 39-megawatt GE generator owned by WAPA that first came into service in 2004, and has been a frequent cause of outages in the district.
The 20-year-old generator might not be needed, if WAPA could begin using four new smaller, more efficient Wartsila generators recently installed at the plant.
But a payment dispute between WAPA and Wartsila has left the units sitting idle, and officials also have not responded to questions about when those units might finally be put into service.
By SUZANNE CARLSON/V.I. Daily News