Power was completely restored to St. Thomas and St. John St. Thomas at 6:22 a.m. Thursday after being out district-wide since 12:57 a.m., according to the Water and Power Authority. This outage is the latest in a series of service interruptions all week in both districts. According to WAPA, this most recent blackout on St. Thomas and St. John began when generating units 23 and 25 failed causing all feeders to trip off line. WAPA is investigating the cause of the generators’ failure. After the failure, plant personnel brought Units 14, 18 and 25 online to help restore power.
Power was out on St. Croix much of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, in the wake of the weekend’s inclement weather which caused problems on the electrical distribution system across several areas of the big island.
Monday, WAPA crews replaced transformers in Jolly Hill and Rost Op Twist,replaced a pole at Estate Work and Rest, and did work at the Patrick Sweeney Pavilion and Bureau of Corrections where partial power conditions, where there was partial power. Power at Watergut Homes needed a private electrician to make repairs to a damaged cable before service could be restored. Isolated outages Monday also affected William’s Delight, Pellier, Annas Hope, Paradise, Whim, Concordia, Mary’s Fancy, Peter’s Rest and Grove Place.
These outages come on the heels of island-wide outages on St. Croix April 23. Those were caused by a fire in a conduit associated with Unit 10’s excitation system. The incident caused a loss of all power generation capacity at the plant which led to all feeders falling off line.
