{"id":293399,"date":"2019-02-07T06:06:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T20:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=293399"},"modified":"2019-02-07T06:06:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T20:06:16","slug":"buried-power-lines-eyed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/buried-power-lines-eyed\/","title":{"rendered":"Buried power lines eyed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Commonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director Gary Camacho speaks in front of business leaders at the Saipan Chamber of Commerce general membership meeting yesterday at the Seaside Hall of Kanoa Resort in Susupe (Bea Cabrera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Overhead cables providing electrical power may soon go the way of the dodo, with the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. contemplating an underground power system that is seen to benefit key areas in the CNMI in the wake of typhoons.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Saipan Chamber of Commerce general membership meeting yesterday at the Seaside Hall of Kanoa Resort in Susupe, CUC executive director Gary Camacho laid out CUC\u2019s resiliency plans after Super Typhoon Yutu. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe underground project is one of the proposals that we are working with Federal Emergency Management Agency. \u2026We believe that, in securing [the power system] underground, we would be able to quickly re-energize critical areas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The priority is both Saipan and Tinian, Camacho later clarified.<\/p>\n

For Saipan, the idea\u2014at least for now\u2014is to bury power lines in key areas so they remain unaffected during storms. The priorities are the hospital\u2014the Commonwealth Health Center\u2014and the airport\u2014the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe hospital is imperative, especially during storms, as there is always a potential of people getting injured and it is important that the hospital is operational. The airport is a facility that has to have 24-hour operation to be able to provide the immediate supplies and materials for humanitarian purposes more than anything else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Camacho said that Yutu left Tinian and the south of Saipan with the most damage. \u201cIt was more than one island and this was really an eye-opener for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe plan to tie Power Plant 1 with Power Plant 4 and inevitably to the hospital. \u2026Other location would be from the substation in Chalan Kiya to the airport to make available an emergency port of entry. This will accommodate 24-hour deliveries because, after Yutu, they could only do that during the day because it ran without power supply at night so we want to make sure that is something that can have a 24-hour [power],\u201d Camacho added.<\/p>\n

Another priority is replacing wood power poles with concrete ones. When Super Typhoon Yutu slammed into Saipan last Oct. 24 and 25, thousands of poles were snapped or taken down by winds of 180 miles per hour and gusts of up to 220 miles per hour. We incurred 2,142 total pole damage, 946 damaged transformers, and 1,118,930 linear feet of damaged overhead conductors\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had thought about events like these and discussed it many times over the years but we really did not fully understand that we would have almost the same degree of damage on both islands,\u201d Camacho said.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Currently, any pole that went down will be replaced by concrete. \u2026We are also going to be changing a lot of wooden cross-arms with fiberglass and we are also considering to move to triple A 6 aluminum, which has a longer lifespan,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

All these would depend on the Federal Emergency Management Agency agreeing to fund this project and Camacho hopes that FEMA would consider them. \u201cThis would really allow us the opportunity to address those critical areas on any restoration of any island and allow us to focus on other areas. \u2026Unlike Typhoon Soudelor [in 2015], which took us 24 days to restore power at the production level, we were able to do it after Yutu in just a few days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Oct. 28 we started to produce power at Power Plant 4 but we had to transfer power over to Power Plant 1. \u2026This was a tricky process and very dangerous but we were able to do it that night. We then went from a small engine to a larger one and, from there, we were able to start to build load on the island.,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Camacho reiterated that, together with the Chamber, one of the priorities of CUC is the economy. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand the importance of the economy, so there is positive growth rate in load restoration from Oct. 25 after Yutu and we continue to do that on both islands. \u2026Currently 99 percent of CUC power customers on Saipan has been restored and 79 percent of Tinian customers have been energized.\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live and we learn and this is a continuous learning process. \u2026We saw how important the government and the private sectors\u2019 relationship is during recovery efforts,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overhead cables providing electrical power may soon go the way of the dodo, with the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":293402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293399","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\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}