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The
Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority said in a statement
that the outages stemmed from the loss of generation at a power
plant. The first blackout hit late on Saturday, and despite
crews restoring power overnight, another blackout hit hours
later.
More than 42,000 people live on St. Thomas, the main island, and
nearly 4,000 others live on St. John.
Outages have become increasingly common across the U.S.
territory, and frustrations boiled over online as people on
social media called on the government to restore electricity.
Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. has pledged to fix the issue, investing
some $100 million in federal funding into the struggling utility
in recent years. But the Virgin Islands Water and Power
Authority is still struggling to provide service. In April,
officials told legislators that the outages were a result of
storms, equipment shortages, weak generation capacity, equipment
breakdowns and years of deferred maintenance.
More than half of the U.S. territory's petroleum-fueled
generating units are more than 25 years old, according to the
U.S. Energy Information Administration. It also noted that
hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017 damaged or destroyed
up to 90% of the U.S. Virgin Islands' transmission and
distribution systems.
The utility agency has said it expects to install temporary
generation and extra battery energy storage at a main power
plant in the upcoming months to help reduce the number of
outages.
Renewable energy sources represent only about 3% of the U.S.
territory's power generating capacity. The average price of
electricity in 2024 was about 33 cents per kilowatt hour, about
twice as high as the U.S. average of 16 cents, according to the
U.S. energy agency.
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