ST. THOMAS — Residents across St. Thomas and St. John experienced a complete power outage late this afternoon after a generation failure at the Randolph Harley Power Plant triggered disruptions throughout the electrical grid, according to a Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority official.
The issue began around 4:45 p.m. when several electrical feeders lost power due to what’s known as an under-frequency event, a condition where power demand exceeds available generation, WAPA Spokesperson Shanell Petersen said.
“Essentially, the demand was not being met by the generation that was being created at the Randolph Harley Power Plant,” she said. “Our team at the power plant attempted to start an additional unit. However, that unit failed, which is where folks identified smoke in the area that was being released from that failure.”
WAPA subsequently experienced a district-wide outage at about 5:30 p.m., Petersen said shortly after 6 p.m.
“The team is still working on restoring power to all customers,” she said.
While WAPA was still assessing the cause of the failure shortly after 6 p.m., Petersen provided additional information when contacted at 8:20 p.m. She said the cause of the outage was due to a failure at the liquefied petroleum gas terminal, noting the new information would help personnel troubleshoot to restore power.
“We don’t know as of yet when it will be restored,” she said.
Petersen noted extreme heat and increased evening demand during peak hours between 5 to 9 p.m. as major contributing factors to the power outage.
“This does cause a strain on the generation units,” she said.
Petersen urged residents to be mindful of their consumption during peak hours and extreme heat to help avoid similar events in the future. She emphasized that WAPA is taking a multi-pronged approach to increase grid reliability, including maintenance of generators and improvements at the power plant, expansion of solar energy integration, and daily inspections by line crews to monitor transformers and overhead lines.
“We’re working on relying more on the solar energy when we can, as well as maintaining the generators and even the line crews are on a daily basis checking the power lines, as well as transformers in the field, so that we are keeping power on despite the high heat that we’re currently experiencing right now as we head into the high of summer in September,” Petersen said.
District-wide power outage hits St. Thomas and St. John after generator failure at WAPA power plant
