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Power outage hits northern villages
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Posted on Sep 14 2005
The northern part of Saipan experienced a power outage after an engine at the main power plant shut off automatically on Tuesday night.
The villages of Capitol Hill, Tanapag, Achugao, San Roque, As Matuis, and Marpi, which were placed under the La Fiesta shopping mall’s power generation system for a couple of weeks, are again obtaining electricity from the island’s main power system.
Hence, these villages are no longer spared from power outages resulting from engine troubles at the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation’s Lower Base power plants, which are undergoing repair and maintenance.
CUC power generation manager Almondo Santos said yesterday that Engine No. 6 at Power Plant automatically tripped at 9:22pm Tuesday due to a problem with the motor’s cooling system.
Santos said CUC technicians were still trying to find out the specific reason for the problem, which cut off power supply to Feeders 4 and 7. The affected areas were without electricity for 12 to 32 minutes.
For about two weeks, the northern Saipan villages had been isolated from CUC’s grid and received reliable power service from the three generators at the former La Fiesta shopping complex.
The La Fiesta engines used to generate power only for the shopping complex and Hotel Nikko Saipan. Each engine has a capacity of 1 megawatt and can feed power to about 750 homes or one large hotel.
CUC utilized the La Fiesta generators to carry the load demand of the northern villages. As a result, these areas were spared from the rotating blackouts that plagued Saipan until last week.
