Wapa

WAPA CEO Cites Bad Luck and Aging Units for St. Thomas Outages, While Governor Points to Propane Transition Problems

The series of recent power outages on St. Thomas were caused by a “run of bad luck” after the authority had been “flirting with disaster the last few weeks," stated Karl Knight, chief executive of the Water and Power Authority during WAPA's Thursday governing board meeting. However, public comments from Governor Albert Bryan Jr. in a different forum add a new dimension to WAPA's recent struggles with maintaining a stable power grid.  During the meeting, Mr. Knight disclosed that at the Randolph Harley power plant, two generating units – #23 and #27 – have been down for several weeks. “Any shortfall in generation has prompted us to have to rotate and load shed in order to meet capacity,” he explained. The unrelenting heat has spiked demand for power, “and so capacity has been really stretched,” he noted.  Mr. Knight once again emphasized that the current struggle to keep these older units online is because “deferred maintenance over time has caught up to us…we are not able to take dow...