After working all night to correct an outage that blacked out portions of the St. Thomas-St. John District, the Water and Power Authority experienced a fault in an auxiliary transformer at the Randolph Harley Power Plant at about 7:45 a.m. Sunday, causing a power outage across both islands.
According to a late morning news release, WAPA has begun the restoration process, with several feeders receiving service as of 11 a.m.
"The plant has implemented all protective measures to return the utility from no service to restoration mode, and we are working diligently to restore full service as safely and efficiently as possible," the news release said. "Plant operators are in the process of bringing units online in a manner that will stabilize the utility’s generating capacity."
The trouble began at about 7:50 p.m. Saturday when Unit 23, WAPA’s workhorse generating unit, went out for undisclosed reasons. That failure tripped several feeders across the St. Thomas-St. John district. About 30 minutes later, Unit 14 tripped, and as a result, additional feeders fell off line.
About 16,000 customers were affected by the initial outage. Then the transformer failed Sunday morning, cutting electrical power to both islands.
As of 11 a.m., feeders still experiencing service interruption were: 6A, 7C, 7D, 9E and a portion of 7A.