The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. aims to have the final feeder, \u201cKiya 4,\u201d up by the end of this week, utility officials said during a press conference Friday, as the CNMI heads into its third month in a state of disaster following Typhoon Soudelor.<\/p>\n
CUC is still on target from the original date to have most of the island energized by end of October, but in 60 days since Typhoon Soudelor hit Saipan, there were logistical issues that made the two months \u201cnot necessarily 60 days of work,\u201d CUC power manager Gary Camacho said.<\/p>\n
As they move into island laterals, the work becomes \u201cmore strenuous,\u201d but they are trying to bring in six more bucket trucks for this effort.<\/p>\n
CUC officials on Friday said they aim to \u201ctie-in\u201d Kiya 4 as soon as this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Aug. 28, we only had three feeders\u20141, 3, and 4\u2014and now, in October, we have all except Kiya 4 and Kiya 4 will be done next week,\u201d said acting executive director John Riegel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a month from now there\u2019s going to be a large number of homes on power,\u201d Riegel told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
CUC has Power Plant 1 at 35-megawatt capacity. When one generator is put back online this week, this would be up to 45 megawatts.<\/p>\n
Power Plant 4, meanwhile, is at full capacity at 8.4 megawatts, Riegel said. This generation is on standby.<\/p>\n
As of Friday morning, CUC was running 19 megawatts of power, with this amount expected to go up as more homes get on the grid.<\/p>\n
CUC information officer Brad Ruszala said they have been working to continue a \u201csteady flow of supplies\u201d and \u201ccut through the red tape\u201d as restoration efforts continue.<\/p>\n
Riegel said one lesson he learned from the typhoon was that they \u201cneed more inventory.\u201d CUC struggles with lack of payment from other government agencies.<\/p>\n
CUC has recovered 635 damaged transformers. Riegel said they have ordered \u201creconditioned\u201d ones from a vendor. About 1,062 are en route.<\/p>\n
Riegel said this was at \u201cless expense\u201d and a difference of \u201ctwo weeks versus two months\u201d in time to arrive on island.<\/p>\n
Inos renews state of emergency<\/strong><\/p>\n Meantime, Gov. Eloy S. Inos renewed on Friday the state of significant emergency and major disaster for a third time since Soudelor hit in August.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026Full utility services have not yet been restored to the island of Saipan,\u201d Inos said.<\/p>\n Inos last renewed the state of disaster on Sept. 3. Then acting-governor Ralph DLG Torres made the declaration a month before for the first time on Aug. 3.<\/p>\n President Barack Obama declared a state of major disaster and significant emergency on Aug. 5, allowing for federal assistance in recovery efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. aims to have the final feeder, \u201cKiya 4,\u201d up by the…<\/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":[49,5416,3618,6333],"class_list":["post-211757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cuc","tag-john-riegel","tag-power-plant","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211757","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=211757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}