The British Virgin Islands Electricity Corporation (BVIEC) commenced final preliminary testing of the new Wartsila Generators as part of the Phase V Power Development Programme at the Pockwood Pond Power Station.

Minister for Communications and Works, Honourable Mark Vanterpool along with the Chairman for the BVIEC, Mr. Ron Potter; General Manager, Leroy Abraham; Deputy General Manager, Mr. Henry Creque and Government officials gathered yesterday at the power station to turn the generators on for testing and to view the new system at work.

Honourable Vanterpool said, “Today [January 30] we are testing 16 megawatts of power which is two of the new Wartsila generators. These generators should be ready by this quarter and then another 8 megawatts in the second quarter, to give us a total of 24 megawatts from the new generators.”

On Saturday both generators went through a bearing test which assesses how well the generators turn on.

General Manager for the BVIEC, Mr. Leroy Abraham said that the bearing test lasted for about five minutes and that Monday’s test was the first time that both generators would be turned on consistently for preliminary testing. 

“We are doing load tests and doing all relevant protection tests for the shutdown of systems in the event of issues on the units”, Mr. Abraham said.

The duration of the performance tests is expected to last for three to four weeks, during which outages may occur.

Deputy General Manager, Mr. Henry Creque said, “Some of the test involves testing the ability to stop immediately after carrying full load. These are emergency stopping procedures, so in these cases there will be brief power outages and we are asking for the community to be patient with us.”

These outages are expected to last for 20 to 30 minutes. However, persons are still encouraged to call the Corporation during outages for information about whether the outage is from testing.

After performance tests are completed, both generators will go through a reliability trial which tests the systems reliability of carrying the load demand of the Territory for approximately two weeks.

Once these tests are successfully completed, both generators will be placed on line.

The Government of the Virgin Islands thanks the public for their patience as they continue to develop infrastructure that will provide sustainable utility services to the Territory. 

Photo Credit: GIS/Franklyn Skerritt