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Parts of island experience two-hour outage
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Posted on Apr 23 2009
Residents in some parts of the island might have been woken up in the middle of the night due to a two-hour emergency power outage early yesterday morning.
From 2am to 4am, feeders in Chalan Kanoa, Dandan, Fina Sisu, San Jose and Susupe were turned off. Lower Base, Puerto Rico, Garapan, China Town and Gualo Rai were affected by the emergency outage.
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. released a notice Wednesday night announcing the outage would occur yesterday morning.
In the announcement, CUC said that during an inspection of the busbar earlier Wednesday, technicians had identified a failed spout.
“It was determined at that time that the failed spout required to be repaired immediately to ensure that it does not affect the power supply,” the notice said.
Last week, the island of Saipan experienced an unexpected outage lasting two hours. CUC officials blamed operator error and a lack of reserve.
For years the island has been on a rotating load shedding schedule. Last July and August the power crisis reached a crescendo when some areas went without power for 12 hours at a time.
As CUC repairs and brings in more engines online, the utility company works to conserve fuel. The utility company is working to restore several engines at Power Plant 1, in order to be ready for September, when the one-year contract with Aggreko ends.
The Aggreko engines have been providing 15 megawatts of power to the island since Sept. 11, virtually halting the blackouts and rotating brownouts that had plagued the island. CUC recently brought back online engines 7 and 3 at Power Plant 1 after months of rehabilitation.
