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Engines overheat, trigger islandwide outages
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Posted on May 29 2008
Overheating engines at Power Plant 1 in Lower Base triggered another islandwide outage yesterday on Saipan.
Commonwealth Utilities Corp. acting power division manager Gary P. Camacho told Saipan Tribune that the islandwide outages began at 11:43am.
Camacho said the restoration process was immediately initiated and completed at 2:31pm.
At that time, Camacho added, the contingent load shedding schedule was reinstated until last night.
CUC Executive Director Antonio S. Muna said in a statement that the utility agency implemented the contingent load shedding at 8am when high temperatures caused the jacket cooling water system on engine No. 8 at Power Plant 1 to exceed its maximum capacity.
“This activated the protective devices which automatically shut down the unit. As a result, the power plant operators manually tripped Feeder 4 and Feeder 7 to compensate for the generation loss,” Muna said.
Immediately after, engine No. 2 was also affected by the high temperatures and this automatically shut down the engine, he said.
Because of the additional generation loss, the Kiya substation was under voltage and automatically tripped off, resulting in the islandwide power outages.
Last Jan. 28, delays in fuel delivery at two power plants on the island triggered sudden rotating outages throughout the island.
