The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. wants to clarify reports that power will be back up in a month\u2014just 30 days after Typhoon Soudelor crippled CUC\u2019s power grid over a week ago.
\n\u201cI am hearing bits and pieces that the power is going to be restored to the island of Saipan in 30 days and that\u2019s not going to happen. We will have power in some places within that amount of time but it\u2019s going to be all dependent on the delivery and shipment of materials that are not here,\u201d acting CUC executive director John Riegel told Saipan Tribune.
\nThe U.S. Department of Energy reported last week that about 276 poles need replacement. CUC reports 300 poles damaged as of press time.
\nBut Riegel said yesterday that further assessment has revealed a higher number of poles that need replacing.
\n\u201cThe number is up to 800 power poles now,\u201d Riegel said based on the percentage of poles observed so far. Once the final assessment is done and all lateral lines off the feeders checked, CUC will know the actual number.
\n \u201cThere is not anything close to that on Guam [for spare poles],\u201d Riegel said of the current count.<\/p>\n
CUC has no spare power poles as of Aug. 9, according to DOE. All poles in stock have been used in the restoration efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to have to ship posts from the [United] States. And there are all kinds of other hardware and conductors\u2014there\u2019s a lot to getting fully restored.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riegel said there are still more remote areas on island that haven\u2019t been assessed yet and issues CUC might discover that they don\u2019t know of.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot put a number on it because\u2026there is still a lot of unknowns,\u201d he said of damage to CUC\u2019s grid.<\/p>\n
Meantime, CUC is close to generating power at Power Plant 4, which will return the local hospital below Navy Hill back to the power grid and not on its own generator.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the primary goal so we are close to getting that objective,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the problems at Power Plant 4 are that the generators got wet. If you power up a generator when it is wet, you\u2019ll get arcing and sparking and shorting\u2026 and what might have taken you two weeks to dry out will take you a year to get repaired. That\u2019s why we have to be very cautious and make sure that it\u2019s dried out\u201d and test measures \u201call come out clean.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in the process of drying it out now and we are hopeful in a couple of days we are going to get it up here,\u201d Riegel added.<\/p>\n
CUC will test the generator and do dry runs.<\/p>\n
DOE on Sunday said that CUC estimates one unit at Power Plant 4 to return to service on Aug. 14.<\/p>\n
Since Typhoon Soudelor tore through Saipan over a week ago\u2014downing power poles and lines and forcing President Barack Obama to declare a state of disaster\u2014all of CUC\u2019s 13,800 electric customers on Saipan remain without power.<\/p>\n
CUC was able to restore limited water pressure to some villages Sunday and officials opened a fifth station where residents can collect potable water. Water is rationed at 100 gallons per day for each family and stations are open from noon to 7pm. (With AP)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. wants to clarify reports that power will be back up in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[49,6221,3618,492],"class_list":["post-207681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cuc","tag-doe","tag-power-plant","tag-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}