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Repair work at Power Plant 1 completed
Repair work on Engine 7 at Power Plant 1 has been completed and it started running over the weekend, according to acting Commonwealth Utilities Corp. executive John Riegel yesterday, as the utility has dried out the last of the generators that got wet when Typhoon Soudelor hit more than two months ago.
“We don’t need the capacity, so it’s on standby. But that is the last of the generators that needed to be dried out. That’s done and it’s functional now,” Riegel told Saipan Tribune yesterday.
That boosts Power Plant 1’s capacity to 45 megawatts, said Riegel.
“Thirty-one [megawatts] is what we are generating now,” he said.
Meantime, Riegel said the 180 transformers that were scheduled to arrive Sunday have made it on island, landing on Saipan between Sunday and Monday.
‘The next batch is coming in a couple of weeks,” he said.
Also, this weekend, Riegel noted CUC sustained 24-hour water service in Kagman, and got 24-hour water service to Isley Reservoir, which services San Antonio up to San Jose.
Riegel said they had a few wells go down across the island, citing “transformer issues” at Obyan wells, which limited water pressure. He added CUC was at work on that yesterday.
“Our plan this week is to finish getting the wells online and getting the last of the eight or 10 lift stations online and then start hanging the transformers for the additional services in some areas where we couldn’t connect people because of the bad transformer,” Riegel said.
People in Chinatown, Kagman, Dandan, and San Vicente, for example, were puzzled as to why they didn’t have power while others around them have.
“Now that we have transformers, we’ll start filling in those holes,” Riegel said.
