With recent short outages on St. Croix and St. Thomas after months of steady reliability, V.I. Water and Power Authority officials said they are pushing forward with a few proactive measures to keep future incidents down while looking at how they can speed up the process of bringing new units online.

In an interview with the Source, WAPA Executive Director Andy Smith said issues with propane affected generating units on St. Croix, but that crews were able to start another unit and get power back online quickly. With propane, factors such as temperature and pressure have to be right, and when something is off, the machines shut themselves down to stave off any potential damage.

Over the past six months, Smith said the authority has been putting some proactive measures in place to temper outages, including putting increased protection on transmission and distribution lines that would limit the number of households impacted at any one time. Instead of 500 people, for example, 100 or maybe 50, might lose power, he said.

Managing vegetation such as vines growing on poles or tree limbs that can fall on a line has been another proactive measure, along with the process of taking units offline when they’re not needed for maintenance so they can sub in when necessary.

Looking ahead, however, Smith said the authority is looking to speed up the process of bringing its four Wartsila units online or at least putting the batteries that come with them into service, ahead of the anticipated March 2023 start date. Though the battery storage comes with the units, they can work separately and be used to increase reliability, he said.