WAPA Says Power Restoration Process Underway After Island-Wide Outage (Update)

Update: WAPA says it has restored power to all of St. Croix.

Earlier: ST. CROIX — WAPA has begun to restore electrical service to St. Croix after the successful start of generating unit 20, WAPA said in a press release on Saturday.

Unit 20 will provide enough capacity to restore service to the power plant itself and to feeders 1,3,5 and 6. Plant personnel are also working to bring a second generating unit on line which will allow for the restoration of the larger feeders on St. Croix.

WAPA says the island-wide outage began at around 4:30 p.m. when a fire erupted in a canduit 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 offline, WAPA says.

According the release, WAPA personnel will continue the effort to restore power as quickly as possible until full restoration has been achieved.