By Gemma Q. Casas
Variety News Staff

SAIPAN residents and businesses should brace for another unannounced blackout today as the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. waits for the delivery of replacement parts, ordered from Singapore, for its troubled engine.
Manolo Reyes, an operator at power plant 1, said the parts to fix engine number 5 did not arrive on time yesterday, and CUC was not able to produce enough electricity for the island.
Reyes said CUC has removed big consumers such as garment factories and hotels from its main grid, but the electricity produced at power plant 1 is still not enough.
Garapan and nearby villages experienced a power outage yesterday morning until the early afternoon.
As of yesterday, power plant 1 was able to produce only 42 megawatts with the 13-megawatt engine no. 5 still down.
Reyes said because the remaining engines are working beyond their capacity, some of them experienced overheating, prompting power plant operators to shut them down until they cool to their normal temperature.
In a separate interview, CUC chief of operations Patrick Leon Guerrero said the parts ordered from Singapore did not arrive on schedule.
The parts were expected to arrive as early as last week and then again yesterday.
“The shipment this morning did not make it,” said Leon Guerrero. “It’s still in Korea. We expect it to arrive at 2 a.m. and then we can make the necessary repairs.”
Leon Guerrero said they have contacted CUC’s dealer in Singapore and asked him to expedite the shipment of the much needed engine parts in order to avoid other unannounced power outages.
“The reality is that we’re always going to be on the edge of load shedding (because of the condition of our engines). We hope to have the parts arrive on the next flight (out of Korea),” he said.
On Monday, parts of Garapan, Chinatown and Tanapag experienced unannounced power outages at separate times due to various inter-related reasons.
For Garapan, the problem was blamed on the lack of lube-oil for a small engine at power plant 2. Other affected areas lost their electricity due to limited power produced at power plant 1 with one big engine still down.