APUA investigating islandwide blackout

The Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA) is investigating Sunday’s islandwide blackout which lasted for just over an hour.

Winston White, electrical engineer at APUA’s Electricity Business Unit, said the exact cause of the outage has not yet been determined.

White said the authority is in talks with the Antigua Power Company (APC) and the Black Pine Plant at Crabbs Peninsula to find out what went wrong.

He noted that from all indications to date, the fault seemed to have emanated from the Black Pine Plant.

“We are still in the process of investigating the exact cause of the outage. We are at an advanced stage and at this point the facts are pointing us to the direction that [there was] an error or fault that occurred inside the Black Pine Plant,” he said.

“So we are in discussion with the engineers at APC and at Black Pine to determine the exact cause of what exactly initiated the outage. We are not quite sure yet but that’s the preliminary information that we have so far,” White said on radio this morning.

The outage occurred at 3:28 a.m. Sunday morning and there was full restoration of power, (meaning all the feeders were closed) at 4:36 a.m.

White said, “This (the outage) is a situation the authority tries its best to avoid because it wants to keep a steady supply of electricity to the consumer.”

The electrical engineer noted that Sunday’s event saw a loss of all generation. He said four engines were online at the time at the APC plant while the Black Pine Plant had no engines on.

White added that the authority plans for contingencies and has more than adequate generation at any point in time.  

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