Commonwealth Utilities Corporation Executive Director Kevin Watson
COMMONWEALTH Utilities Corporation Executive Director Kevin Watson said the islandwide power outage on Sunday evening was due to mechanical issues involving engine 7 at Power Plant 1.
The power outage, which started at around 9:30 p.m., lasted for more than two hours in some areas.
In an interview Monday evening, Watson said, “An operator at PP 1, when he was inspecting one of the engines, diesel engine 7, heard loud noises coming from the engine. So he pushed the emergency stop button to prevent further damage to the engine. When he did that, it caused a chain reaction for the other engines to run down basically causing the islandwide power outage.”
Watson added, “The system did as designed and did what it’s supposed to do. In an emergency shutdown, it will create a chain reaction…. Then we brought a standby engine back online. Within 59 minutes they were able to have feeder 1 back online, which feeds the hospital, within 65 minutes feeder 4 was back online, and after that, feeder 7…at 11:30 p.m. — all feeders were back online.”
Watson said “engine 7 is now totally shut down until we make an assessment and…repairs. [But] we have stable power now.”
He commended the power plant operators for handling the situation “extremely well” in a manner that minimizes further damage to the engine and brought the power back online.
