Wapa

Crisis, Not Emergency, WAPA CEO Says After Latest Generation Failure Causes Districtwide St. Thomas/St. John Outage

V.I. Water and Power Authority Chief Executive Officer Karl Knight on Monday described the latest St. Thomas/St. John District power disruption as a “power crisis,” but said he did not yet consider it an emergency, even as he outlined the technical failures that forced the Randolph Harley Power Plant offline and left customers facing unstable service and possible two-hour rotations. Speaking during a Monday morning press conference, Mr. Knight said the districtwide outage that began Saturday evening was caused by a “series of cascading technical issues” that started with Unit 27, long considered one of the more problematic generation units in the St. Thomas plant. According to Mr. Knight, Unit 27 “tripped offline due to a fuel valve error,” triggering “fluctuations in frequency and voltage that ultimately caused the [Randolph Harley power plant] to go offline.” Once Unit 27 failed, WAPA’s remaining Wärtsilä engines could not reliably bring the plant back into service. Mr. Knight sai...