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Muna: Transmission equipment causing outages
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Posted on Jan 30 2009
Recent power outages have been caused by faulty transmission equipment and not a lack of power generation, according to Commonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director Antonio Muna.
Some of the hardware that is supposed to isolate areas when an outage occurs is old and exposed to the elements, therefore not working properly, Muna said. The wind is also a factor in the distribution failure.
“So we need to go out there and change the equipment that’s faulty and ensure that when problems occur in transmission and distribution it’s not finding its way back to the plant,” he said.
Muna compared the current situation to a breaker in a house tripping, stopping power from going to that particular area of the house.
“What’s happening is out here that particular breaker that’s supposed to open to isolate the problem is not happening,” he added. “Instead of just isolating that particular area, it’s taking down the power of the entire house. We need to ensure components necessary to isolate are there and won’t find itself going all the way back to the plant.”
Muna said CUC has ordered its annual parts inventory, totaling around half a million dollars. Within that half million should be components to help with the transmission and distribution problems, he said.
Due to a lack of power generation last summer, Saipan was experiencing prolonged brownouts and blackouts. Since September, CUC has been renting emergency generators, adding 15 megawatts of power to the system to help meet the daily island demand.
