Randolph Harley Powerplant in St. Thomas. Photo Credit: VI CONSORTIUM
ST. THOMAS — The effort to restore electrical service in the St. Thomas - St. John district has been adversely affected by operational challenges with several generators at the Randolph Harley Power Plant, WAPA said Monday. The district is experiencing a more than four and a half hour blackout which began at approximately 4 a.m. today.
WAPA spokesman Jean Greaux, Jr. said this morning that teams of engineers and plant personnel are working to bring generators online to restore service to all customers on St. Thomas, St. John, Hassel Island and Water Island.
“The teams are focused on bringing units online to rebuild generation capacity. Adequate levels of capacity are needed to restore service to all our customers,” he said. Mr. Greaux said that over the last several hours, personnel have faced various operational challenges with WAPA’s fleet of generators which include Units 14, 15 and 23.
“Once electrical service has been restored at the plant, personnel will bring the LPG-fired Wartsila generators and a leased gas turbine, Unit 27, online to augment the restoration. Efforts will continue until all customers are restored,” Mr. Greaux added.
According to WAPA Alert emergency messages dispatched by the public utility this morning, a district-wide outage resulted from the sudden loss of all generation capacity at the Krum Bay plant shortly after 4 a.m. It was unclear if the cause of the outage has been determined or what units were online at the time of the plant failure.
