Outages at hotels, garment factories could take longer

Power outages at Saipan hotels and garment factories will last a few more days, as Commonwealth Utilities Corp. personnel continue to fix a broken engine, CUC executive director Lorraine A. Babauta said yesterday.

The outages were a result of ongoing electrical repair of engine number 8 at Power Plant 1, which is located in Lower Base.

According to Babauta, CUC needs hotels and garment factories to use their own system to reduce the engine problem’s impact on the CUC power system.

But she stressed that hotels and garment factories do not lose power service all at the same time, as outages are being done based on a load-shedding schedule.

“We sometimes run short of four megawatts during peak hours. That’s when the hotels and garment factories are hooked off. So outages normally take only a couple of hours at a time,” Babauta said. “Our crews continue to work on the engine, particularly the motor for the cooling system. They need to rewind the wiring on the motor. We expect it to be done in a couple of days.”

The power interruptions at hotels and garment factories started on Tuesday.

Babauta said that if additional load has to be taken off-line, power outage may occur in As Teo, Kagman and Papago between 6:30pm and 8pm. Areas within the Chalan Kiya substation, San Vicente, Airport Road, As Perdido, Koblerville, Dandan and some parts of Papago may also experience power cutoff between 8pm and 10pm.

CUC has four power plants on Saipan, which has installed capacity at 117 megawatts. The primary plant in Lower Base has a derated capacity of 82 megawatts.