Power Outages Slam St. Thomas-St. John and St. Croix Districts Amid Continuing Energy Crisis

The St. Thomas-St. John district was crippled by severe power outages Wednesday, with a handful of feeders, such as 6A and 8A, experiencing back-to-back rotations.

On St. Thomas, outages began mid-morning and lasted until 11:35 p.m.., when V.I. Water and Power Authority officials confirmed Unit 23 was back online and all feeders had been restored. Two feeders on St. Croix were also hit, with officials attributing the disruptions to vegetation impacting the lines because of Wednesday’s downpour, along with lightning strikes.

Frequent outages have plagued the territory for months, leading to an energy state of emergency declaration in April. The current disruptions come as WAPA commissions new fuel-efficient Wartsila Phase 2 generators, which required taking three legacy Wartsila Phase 1 units offline for LPG interconnection work, according to the authority’s Communications Director Shanell Petersen. WAPA expects this work to conclude by Friday, aiming to restore sufficient generating capacity. The new units will add 36 megawatts to the Randolph Harley Power Plant, she said.