Oct. 22, 2007 — V.I. Water and Power Authority (WAPA) customers on St. Thomas’ feeders 6A, 7A and 8A, 9A and 10A experienced an outage at 9 05 a.m. Monday when a transformer blew on Feeder No. 6, located adjacent to the Randolph E. Harley Power Plant.
"Because of the proximity to the plant, the system detected a fault and opened a bus tie breaker on the plant’s north and south bus tie transformers to protect the power system," said a WAPA news release. "The bus tie transformers connect the 34 kV system, which feeds the substations from the power plant to the 15 kV system, which feeds the 'A' feeders. 'A' feeders serve the west end, north side and town areas of St. Thomas."
WAPA feeders Nos. 9 and 10 were returned to service at 9:30 a. m. using the power plant’s south transformer, a used transformer recently purchased from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, according to Glenn Rothgeb, WAPA's chief operating officer.
"Subsequently, generating units No. 11 and No. 18 tripped off line," the release said. "Unit No. 23 was put in service, and power to the affected feeders was temporarily restored, but tripped again at 12:16 p.m. when the south transformer opened again, losing all of the 'A' feeders, feeder No. 7C, and units No. 15 and No. 23. At that time, plant and line personnel operating in the field were tying feeders in order to restore service to customers. Plant personnel continued to work on the electrical problem in the plant. By 2 p.m., unit No. 18 was returned to service and all feeders except No. 7C were restored. At 3:30 p.m., unit No. 23 was put on line and feeder No. 7C was closed."
Plant personnel are still troubleshooting to determine the cause of several of the problems.
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