Broken bolt causes power outage

The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. announced another islandwide power outage, even as lights went out in various parts of Saipan yesterday.

CUC went on an emergency load shedding starting 9:30am yesterday after a stud bolt for the cylinder head of an engine at Power Plant 1 in Lower Base broke. The utility firm expected its crew to take about 16 hours to work on the problem.

Areas affected by the load shedding were Chalan Kiya, Kannat Tabla, Dandan, Fina Sisu, San Vicente, Papago, Koblerville, As Perdido, San Antonio, Chalan Kanoa, San Jose, Susupe, Beach Road, Capitol Hill, and Kagman.

In a press conference, CUC deputy director Bernard Villagomez advised customers to prepare for another power outage that would take place from 8am to 4pm Saturday.

CUC will conduct maintenance and servicing on the Power Plant 1 bus-bar systems and high voltage breakers, he said.

“A bus-bar system is the main conductor that separates the generator and feeder breakers. The main CUC breaker will disconnect the electricity from the engines to the outside field distribution or power pole systems. Therefore we cannot feed electricity to any of the grids,” CUC explained.

Although the work would concentrate on Power Plant 1, both Power Plants 2 and 4 have to be shut down as well to ensure the safety of CUC personnel, Villagomez added.

“We understand that the temperature this June is high and this outage will cause personal inconvenience. We strongly urge people with health problems to check with their doctors or go to [the Commonwealth Health Center].

“Otherwise, we know that the customers understand how important it is to take care of the air conditioners and other appliances in their house. Likewise, it is imperative that we take care of the community’s investments, which at this time, is the urgent care of the bus-bar breakers,” CUC explained.

Villagomez said the hospital would receive minimal impact from the power outage. He noted that the hospital have a power generator, as well as a back-up generator. He added that the feeder that supplies power to the hospital would be the last to be disconnected and first to be put online on Saturday.

“The power outage may not even take a whole day, depending on how fast everything will be done,” said Villagomez.

Further, the utility firm advised customers to expect water shortages from Saturday through Tuesday, June 21, as the water wells would not be able to produce water to the reservoirs during the power outage.

Acting CUC power generation manager Al Santos said the maintenance work scheduled for Saturday was the first to be conducted on the power plants in several years.

“For the past years, all we’d been doing were piecemeal maintenance work. It’s been a while since we last did an overall maintenance; I can’t even remember when it was,” said Santos.