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Outage mars ‘no-more-load-shedding’ promise
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Posted on Sep 08 2005
Brief power outages hit certain Kagman and Garapan areas, as the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. experienced trouble with a newly fixed engine at the power plant yesterday morning.
CUC, however, said that the problem was immediately addressed and would not necessitate load shedding, which the utility had stopped doing since Wednesday.
The lights went out in Kagman around 10:30am because of a problem with one of the lubricators of Engine No. 8 at Power Plant 1, CUC power generation manager Almondo Santos said.
In an effort not to disrupt school activities, CUC restored power in Kagman at 10:45am. Instead, utility personnel cut the power supply to Garapan and other villages receiving electricity from Feeder 2, the only feeder that does not provide power to a school.
The engine trouble occurred as CUC personnel were trying to break in the 13-megawatt Engine No. 8, whose repair was completed on Monday Sept. 5.
The engine currently generates 6.5 megawatts of power to Saipan, but CUC plans on gradually raising this to about 10 megawatts.
Although the engine has not yet reached its maximum capacity, the additional 6.5 megawatts it has been providing was enough for CUC to handle the island’s power demand and end load shedding. “We have not been load shedding for the past two days,” said CUC executive director Lorraine Babauta.
She added that the cool weather during the past two days helped lower the community’s load demand, as there were less people turning on their air-conditioning systems.
Engine No. 8 has been down since the early part of the year.
Man B&W Singapore Ltd., the contractor hired by CUC to repair the engine, recommended shutting down the generator due to severe vibrations. This left Saipan’s main power plant short of a 13-megawatt generator, or about 11-megawatt capacity each day and night.
One megawatt feeds power to about 750 homes or one large hotel.
The reduced power generation capacity subsequently forced CUC to implement load shedding, which resulted in rotating blackouts on Saipan.
