Previous Story
Power outages may drag on further
|
Posted on Jun 03 2008
Rolling blackouts are expected to hit Saipan until July or August as maintenance dates on two power engines at Power Plant 1 in Lower Base are being pushed back.
As this developed, Commonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director Antonio S. Muna apologized to the public for announcing last month that outages would end in June.
“I sincerely apologize to the public for being too optimistic,” said Muna in an interview with Saipan Tribune.
In his meeting with the Saipan Chamber of Commerce last May 7, the CUC executive director promised that rolling blackouts would be a thing of the past come June 2008.
But Muna told the Saipan Tribune on Monday that when he made the announcement that time, he had information that he felt was reliable.
“Based on that information we felt that by June 30th we would have engines 1 and 7 online,” he said.
Muna said that over the past few weeks a delay in getting necessary parts for those two engines pushed back the dates when they expect to complete the maintenance effort.
Instead of June 30, he said they are now looking at July 15 to complete maintenance work on engine 7.
As for engine 1, Muna said, they are expecting a completion date of July 31.
“Everything is being pushed back as a result of what we are going through right now,” he noted.
Once engines 1 and 7 come out of the maintenance cycle, the utilities can repair the two additional engines, he added.
Saipan experienced extensive power outages on Monday after engines 3 and 6 at the Power Plant 1 in Lower Base went down due to mechanical problems.
