As a districtwide power outage continues to affect St. Thomas and St. John, Acting Gov. Tregenza Roach announced that government offices will open at noon Monday. Additionally, Government House said that a press conference at which Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. is expected to make a “major announcement” has been moved from 10 a.m. to noon, and the V.I. Legislature said it would open at 10 a.m.
According to the government, a press conference about the outage is planned for 10 a.m. Monday at WAPA’s Sunny Isles business office on St. Croix.
Most or all of the district has been without power or intermittent power since Saturday around 6 p.m., when the V.I. Water and Power Authority issued an alert that it was investigating the cause of the outage. Multiple alerts followed, blaming “loss of generation at the power plant,” “grid instability,” and this morning, “a safety mechanism built into the generation units” that is leading to a delay in restarting the Wartsila units.
The prolonged outage has led to an outcry on social media by residents frustrated at the loss of productivity as well as food supplies, and the increased cost of running generators due to the surge in fuel prices since the start of the war on Iran. Many are calling on the governor to declare a state of emergency, as he did in the fall of 2024.
The disruption comes just weeks after WAPA and the Office of Disaster Recovery signed a contract to move forward with a major FEMA-funded power plant replacement effort on St. Thomas and St. Croix.
The agreement with R-G Engineering/Javelin Gramercy Ventures Joint Venture will replace portions of the Randolph Harley Power Plant on St. Thomas and fully modernize the Richmond Power Plant on St. Croix, marking one of the territory’s largest utility infrastructure undertakings since hurricanes Irma and Maria, according to a statement from ODR.
“This is a transformative opportunity. It completes the positioning of St. Thomas for the future and gives St. Croix the chance to rebuild and transform its plant,” WAPA CEO and Executive Director Karl Knight said in a call with the Source at the time.
The project stems from FEMA’s Public Assistance Program, which pledged support after the 2017 storms to help stabilize and replace damaged and aging generation infrastructure throughout the territory. According to Knight, ODR later bundled the projects together and led efforts to secure a contractor capable of handling the scale of the work.
The selected contractor, based in Puerto Rico, is already familiar with WAPA’s system. Knight said the company previously assisted with repairs tied to Unit 27 and issues involving Unit 15 at the Harley plant, among other things, giving it experience with the authority’s facilities and the operational realities of isolated island grids.
