WAPA said LPG terminal failure caused district-wide outage in St. Thomas-St. John

Official document: https://www.viwapa.vi/docs/default-source/2023-pr/press-release-(9.3.2025)-wapa-addresses-cause-of-district-wide-power-outage-in-st.-thomas-st.-john-district.pdf?sfvrsn=24835123_3

Archive page: https://www.viwapa.vi/news-information/press-releases/press-release-details/2025/09/04/wapa-addresses-cause-of-territory-wide-power-outage-in-st.-thomas-st.-john-district

The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority said a failure at the liquefied petroleum gas terminal at about 4:46 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2025 caused an underfrequency event that cut power to several feeders across the St. Thomas-St. John district.

WAPA said the event triggered a safety mechanism designed to protect the grid from collapsing by quickly reducing demand and stabilizing frequency.

As part of recovery efforts, Unit 15 was restarted. WAPA said smoke was seen at the Randolph Harley Power Plant at about 5:30 p.m. during that restart, and said there was no fire at the facility.

The authority said its operations and maintenance contractor, Saintnals, was working to restore functionality at the LPG terminal so generation units could be returned to service. As of about 8:40 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2025, WAPA said several feeders had been restored.