At 9:56 p.m., a customer reported seeing sparks on the power pole directly in front of the ABC Store in Garapan.
After inspection it was determined that lighting had struck the arrestor on the pole, which had caused the sparks.
This lightning strike caused a heavy transient fault in the Feeder 2 circuit activating the protective equipment which automatically shutdown the Aggreko Power Plant.
Power plants 1 and 4 were not able to sustain the immediate loss of generation and their engines had also shutdown resulting in the island wide power outage.
Both the field crews and the power plant staff immediately initiated the power restoration process as the line crews isolated the field problem and the power plant staff coordinated to synchronize the power plants to restore power to the grid.
The restoration process was completed with the Kiya 1 circuit at 12:02 a.m.
CUC would like to apologize for any inconvenience this incident had imposed on the community.
