ST. THOMAS — A series of events involving WAPA’s generating units on Thursday has left the Randolph Harley power plant without adequate generation capacity to meet peak power demand, WAPA announced Thursday night. As a result, and as of 8:30 pm, Feeder 6B and Ridge Road feeder are experiencing an electric service interruption. Affected areas include: Main Street, V.I. Legislature, some areas of Veterans Drive, a portion of Estate Nazareth and Vessup Bay.
According to WAPA, the generation capacity at the power plant first became unstable at 1:24 pm Thursday when a transformer protection system on generating Unit 25 operated as it should and took the unit off line. While plant personnel were bringing another unit on line to meet power demand and restore the service to the affected customers, Unit 23 tripped due to a fuel oil leak. This resulted in the loss of additional feeders. Unit 25 was later restarted and along with Units 14 and 15, service was restored to all customers. A few hours later, around 6 p.m., Unit 15 tripped resulting in a service interruption to a significant number of feeders in the St. Thomas – St. John district. Unit 15 was restarted and remains on line with Units 14 and 25. The three units are providing on average, 50 megawatts of generation capacity, short of the almost 58-60 megawatts needed to meet peak demand.
Plant personnel continue to make repairs to the leaking fuel line on Unit 23. The plans are for the unit to be restored to service tonight allowing WAPA to maintain the generation capacity required to meet peak demand for electric service, WAPA concluded.
Tags: Randolph Harley power plant, wapa
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