Providenciales, Turks & Caicos Islands (Monday, July 6th) - On Sunday July 5th, at approximately 1:30pm residents of PPC's service territories experienced an interruption in power, which lasted approximately 90 minutes.
A fire on a surge protection panel, servicing Generator 12 at the PPC Plant in Providenciales, resulted in a total plant outage at 1:30 pm, as the protection systems on the other generators, which were on line, automatically engaged in response to the electrical fault detected. The automatic protection system is designed to automatically shut the individual generators down in the case of fire or lightning strike, for example.
PPC's Manager of Plant Operation's Michael Polonio said, "The fire suppression system was deployed, and the fire was quickly brought under control. PPC's emergency response procedures were deployed and worked efficiently and effectively." Service restoration started immediately thereafter and was completed by 3:10 pm when the last feeder was re-energized. Repairs to the generator are underway and the unit will be back in service within a week.
PPC apologizes to its customers for any inconvenience caused and advises that the company continues to review its fire suppression and restoration processes to reduce any further occurrences.
PPC would like to also advise that this power interruption was not caused by a fuel shortage as has been insinuated.
