Rolling electricity outages on St. Thomas are over, for now, Water and Power Authority Chief Executive Officer Karl Knight said Thursday, though scheduled and maintenance interruptions may persist territory-wide as grid repairs and equipment failures continue.
One electrical interruption was planned for Friday in St. Croix’s Estate Frederikshaab as power lines were transferred to new storm-tough composite poles. About 70 WAPA customers on Feeder 8B could expect a power outage between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., according to a WAPA statement.
The St. Thomas rolling outages were to conserve fuel as the Authority dealt with shortages. WAPA officials feared reserves would run dry before the weekend. A recent estimate, however, found there was enough fuel to keep the power on until Saturday when a new fuel shipment was expected, Knight told the Senate’s Committee on Disaster Recovery, Infrastructure, and Planning. Knight said, ideally, the territory has two weeks worth of fuel on hand.
Since at least April, the tanks, and cash on hand, had been running low, prompting Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. to declare a state of emergency. The Senate voted to authorize extending the state of emergency but decried a lack of planning.
Many senators at the hearing Thursday said they would not vote for a further extension of the state of emergency because it reduced legislative oversight. Knight, who has been CEO for roughly five weeks, said he was attempting to lead a “new WAPA” that was nimble and proactive. Having fast access to emergency funds helped meet unexpected costs, he said.
“The Water and Power Authority is not out of the situation that necessitated the state of emergency,” he said.
The Authority had a $51 million line of credit with two banks and a decade-or-more old $15 million overdraft with First Bank, WAPA officials said.
While rolling power outages have frustrated many in St. Thomas and St. John, about a mile south of Christiansted, the Bugby Hole area has been without electricity from the Water and Power Authority since June 26, said Sen. Kenneth Gittens.
Knight said the Authority was working to put new composite poles in the sparsely-populated area as privately-installed underground conduits installed long ago didn’t meet modern standards, meaning WAPA could not use them to run power lines.
Throughout the territory, WAPA had installed 80 percent of planned composite poles, which officials said were superior to traditional wooden poles: 4,028 composite poles installed on St. Croix so far and 2,334 on St. Thomas. The project was projected to be completed by summer 2026.
In addition to line undergrounding and composite poles, the Authority was hiring crews to clear trees and other vegetation that was responsible for many of the power outages during Tropical Storm Ernesto. Such standing crews had not been on hand since 2020, Knight said.
A major concern was replacing the malfunctioning automatic meter-reading system that had delivered incorrect bills to an unknown number of customers. Roughly 50 percent of the automatic meters were failing, WAPA officials said.
Knight urged people who’d received unusual bills to contact WAPA’s customer service line.
“They need to call the customer service and dispute their bills. Clearly they can’t be billed for services they are not receiving,” he said.
The Authority was hiring meter readers to manually check usage while a fix for the system was found. A request for proposals was planned to be released Oct. 1 — calling out to contractors interested in working on the project that was funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“The whole process is going to get a revamp,” Knight said.
The automatic meter-reading system had been damaged by storms, the territory’s excessive heat and other environmental factors. Both central systems and equipment in the field experienced failures, WAPA officials said.
Knight rattled off a lengthy list of repairs needed: in the St. Thomas and St. John district, a gas turbine at the Randolph Harley Power Plant was inoperable. The transmission line for Feeder 11 was inoperable. The Donald Francois Substation had several damaged and inoperable breakers. A power transformer connecting transmission and distribution assets at the East End Substation was inoperable. The distribution line to St. John was inoperable and one of two transmission lines was down. In St. Croix, a power transformer that connects generation, transmission, and distribution assets at the Estate Richmond Power Plant was inoperable. Steam Turbines 10 and 11, and Gas Turbine 16 were inoperable.
“The situation is exacerbated by lengthy lead times and high costs for component replacements, combined with the Authority’s limited financial resources,” Knight said, adding many older power-generating units were well beyond their expected lifespan and overdue for maintenance or major overhauls. “Preventative maintenance activities are often delayed due to shortages of manpower, training, and equipment, further compromising system reliability. Several units have not received major overhauls in over twelve years, resulting in diminished performance and reduced capacity.”
Water distribution continued to be a problem in St. Croix, especially in the Hannah’s Rest area. On St. Thomas, water service work in Mahogany Estate and Blackbeard Hill were on hold pending environmental assessments, he said.
“These critical infrastructure projects — ranging from transformer replacements, microgrids, undergrounding, and composite pole installations to generation upgrades and submarine cable replacements — are essential for strengthening WAPA’s overall infrastructure and ensuring a more resilient power system for the Virgin Islands,” Knight said.
Knight also pledged to investigate how the Authority came to have a large number of transformers calibrated for voltages not used in the territory. He hoped to swap or sell the key spare parts with neighboring islands, potentially the British Virgin Islands, and procure transformers with the correct voltages.
