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Faulty hardware causes islandwide power outage
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Posted on Aug 21 2008
A faulty system hardware in the Kagman area caused an islandwide outage that lasted about three hours early yesterday morning.
A problem with a line in Kagman caused Engine No. 2 in Power Plant 1 to go down about 3:45am yesterday morning, said Antonio Muna, Commonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director. Engine No. 2 triggered Power Plant 4 to go down.
“Basically [Engine No. 2] brought down Power Plant 4,” Muna said.
Power Plant 4 went down about 3:50am. The engines were restarted three hours later.
Yesterday morning, only Engine No. 3 was operational at Power Plant 1. Engine 2 of Power Plant 1 began working at 2:30pm, while Engine No. 6 began working around 5:45pm, Muna said. Engine 6 had been undergoing repairs at the time of the incident.
“It’s all related to not having enough power generated, essentially,” he said. “What happened [was that the engines] are just overburdened.”
Muna said once the Aggreko generators become operational in September, he does not anticipate similar situations to occur.
“If we had three of four [engines] up, they could have sustained the events,” he said.
The island was also affected by extended rotating outages yesterday. CUC was down to a “one-engine scenario,” meaning the two-hour rotating outages were extended to three hours in some areas, Muna said.
He did not know the areas affected by the extended outages.
CUC is canceling a four-hour planned outage for Middle Road this morning, Muna said. He said the outage is so extensive that CUC is holding off on the repairs until further notice.
