Mar. 4, 2003 – Power was knocked out of a large part of St. Thomas early Tuesday morning because of a problem with a voltage regulator at the Water and Power Authority's Randolph Harley Power Plant in Krum Bay.
As of 12:30 p.m. electricity had been fully restored, but crews continued making repairs on the affected units throughout the day, Patricia Blake Simmonds, WAPA public information officer, said.
At mid-day Simmonds had said that WAPA was "alternating Feeders 6 and 7 now while emergency repairs are being made to a voltage regulator on Unit 15."
A release issued at the end of the work day said that repair were ongoing to Unit 15. Further, it stated, "Unit 11 was also off line for minor condenser repairs and burner problems. In addition, Unit 18 remains down for a major overhaul."
Repairs were completed to Unit 11, and it was being placed back in service, the release said.
Simmonds said areas affected on Feeder 7 were Contant, Sototown, Altona, Solberg, Lilliendahl, Mountain Top, Mafolie, St. Peter Mountain Road, North Side, Mandahl, Estate Harmony, Cassi Hill and sections of Tutu. She said Feeder 6 serves an area from Nisky to the west.
WAPA was able to restore electricity to all feeders at mid-day "by pushing Unit 13 to its maximum potential and asking large power customers to run their own generators," the release said.
The downtown area was not affected by the outages, although it had experienced a brief outage Monday afternoon, apparently from the same voltage regulator problem.
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