300% Increase in Useage Causes Power Outages

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Two separate faults and a 300% increase in load resulted in long power outages in the Fogagogo area last week.

These outages occurred during the peak load period on three consecutive nights; Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week.

The cause of the outages were due to a faulty transformer arrester (Wednesday), a failed transformer (Thursday) and a 300% increase in load in the Fogagogo area.

ASPA said in a statement, this 300% load increase is attributed to increased air-conditioning brought about by the recent hot weather in the territory.

Thursday night’s outage lasted more than five hours because linemen were unable to determine why the Fogagogo line fuse kept blowing each time the line was re-energized.

The Linemen were unaware (until much later) that load levels had increased by over 300%.

The power line fuse rating which was satisfactory until then was suddenly under-rated.

The load increase around the rest of Tutuila averaged 10 %; well within existing fuse ratings.

After multiple attempts on Thursday night to reenergize the Fogagogo line, ASPA linemen increased the fuse rating by 67%.

The fuse held, only because it was already late into the night and loads were already falling. This same fuse however, blew on Friday night.

After a system review on Saturday morning, the Fogagogo line was re-fused to handle the increased loads.

Upstream fuse ratings were also reviewed and upgraded as well.

ASPA crews also installed load loggers at main fusing points; data collected from these loggers will be used to finalize fuse ratings over the next few days.

Due to the continuous salt spray in the area, ASPA will have to increase the frequency of maintenance on overhead lines in the Fogagogo area.

In order to further improve the reliability of supply to the Fogagogo area, ASPA plans to extend a second phase line from CTC to the Moana O Sina hotel.

ASPA will also revisit an earlier plan to build an alternate supply line to Fogagogo from the Vaitogi side.

ASPA apologizes to all customers who were affected.

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