💧 Water and Power · U.S. Virgin Islands
WAPA said weather, equipment faults contributed to islandwide outages in St. Croix and service interruptions in St. Thomas-St. John
The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority said on May 7, 2024, that adverse weather and equipment problems contributed to several power disruptions across the territory during the previous week and weekend, including an islandwide outage on St. Croix and feeder interruptions in the St. Thomas-St. John district.
WAPA said the St. Croix islandwide outage began at about 4:40 p.m. on May 3, 2024. The authority said extreme weather initially caused a loss of generation, and plant personnel later found a fault on a transformer that triggered a protection scheme designed to prevent damage. WAPA said it was gathering data for a root-cause analysis.
A second major interruption occurred on St. Croix at about 1 a.m. on May 5, 2024, when an emergency shutdown protocol was activated at the LPG terminal facility, according to WAPA. The authority said the shutdown is a safety mechanism intended to protect the Richmond power plant and that it was working with partners to determine the cause and corrective actions.
Later that morning, at about 7:11 a.m., several St. Croix feeders lost service for about 12 minutes after generation was lost from GT20, WAPA said. The authority said diagnostics found the unit tripped because of poor power supply in the turbine control system.
In the St. Thomas-St. John district, including Water Island, several feeders experienced interruptions after Unit 23 tripped during heavy rain, WAPA said. The authority said weather conditions delayed some work but diagnostic assessments were carried out to identify the cause of the generation loss.
WAPA also said it had plans to upgrade and modernize the grid and add renewable energy projects, though it did not tie those longer-term efforts to immediate restoration of the outages described.