WAPA ENGAGES TWO-HOUR ROTATING POWER OUTAGE SCHEDULE IN ST. THOMAS – ST. JOHN WHILE THE EFFORT CONTINUES TO BUILD ADEQUATE GENERATION CAPACITY TO MEET POWER DEMAND

The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority will today employ a limited rotating service interruption schedule beginning at 8 a.m. while it works to build enough generation capacity to adequately support the power demand of the St. Thomas – St. John district.
 
Following a Monday night fire and flash over of generating Unit 15’s breaker, which has made the unit unavailable, plant personnel worked into the night until just about 3 am to successfully bring another generator, Unit 25, on line and provide the adequate capacity needed to maintain the demand for power at that time.  However, in anticipation that as the morning wears on, the demand for power will increase and WAPA will not have the capacity to needed to sustain all feeders with only Units 25, 14 and 18 on line. As such, the rotating power interruption schedule has become necessary.
 
In light of the anticipated shortfall in power generation capacity, the Authority will implement the following rotation schedule:
 
From 8 am – 10 am – portions of Feeder 7A will be without power; sections of the Altona, Solberg, Mountain Top, Northstar Village and Estate Dorothea will be affected;
 
From 10 am – 12 noon, — portions of Feeder 6 A will be without power; sections of Crown Mountain, the area from UVI west to Bordeaux and Scott Free will be affected;
 

The rotating power outages will remain in effect until the Authority has brought additional capacity to the electrical grid to sustain the peak power demand estimated at about 62 megawatts.
 
WAPA has already sought the support of major customers such as UVI, Tutu Park Mall, the larger hotel properties and Yacht Haven Grande for them to operate on their standby power generators today, a move that will allow the Authority to distribute its limited generation capacity across all feeders primarily to school campuses, residential and small business customers.
 
The effort also resumed earlier this morning to restore service to both the Authority’s workhorse, generating Unit 23, and Unit 15.