APUA investigates the causes of the weekend’s power outages

APUA, the country’s lone utility company, has provided some answers to the
frequent and lengthy power outages that affected thousands of customers over the
weekend.
In what it described as a preliminary report, Electricity Business Manager, Andre
Matthias said the causes of the problem are still being investigated, and that a more
comprehensive report will be released on Monday.
According to the report, the first stage of outages was from approximately 4:00 pm
to 6:00 pm on Saturday. It said that this happened in preparation for planned
maintenance at the Cassada Gardens Substation. It added that APUA had prepared
an advisory.
Accordingly, the second set of interruptions resulted from a sudden and unplanned
failure at the Friars Hill Substation. This created an emergency, causing an un-
scheduled and widespread interruption to electricity customers, including
commercial St. John's. This outage lasted from approximately 9:30 pm on Saturday
to just after 10:00 am on Sunday.
On Sunday evening, the authority’s statement said the situation is presently under
control with power restored to all customers, although all the feeders are not in
their original configuration. It said that they would all be restored to their normal
configuration by today.
Large sections of St. John’s and its environs were without electricity for varying
lengths of time from Saturday night into Sunday due to the issues at the Cassada
Gardens substation.
Teams of engineers are carrying out their investigations to understand what caused
the outages.