St. Croix Experiences Extensive Electrical Service Interruption Thursday Evening

ST. CROIX — An electrical service interruption occurred on St. Croix just after 6 p.m. Thursday evening when a blown fuse in a switchgear at the Estate Richmond power plant tripped generating Units 11 and 17, the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority said in a release following the outage. WAPA said the unit’s tripping off line caused a cascading effect on up to ten feeders.

Personnel worked to isolate the affected area in the switchgear while restarting Unit 17 to facilitate partial electrical restoration across the island, according to the semiautonomous entity. Service was restored to seven feeders initially (1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, 6A, 9B). Unit 19 was subsequently brought on line to facilitate the restoration of the three remaining affected feeders (6B, 10A and 10B).

Full restoration of service was achieved at 7:26 p.m., according to WAPA.

Plant personnel were expected to work into the night to determine what circumstances led to the blown fuse in the power plant’s station switchgear.