I think WAPA is screwing us over.

I read an article that they are/were going to start doing rolling black outs in addition to the 20% hike in rates. Not sure if thats the situation but yes been out every couple days at my place, for a few hours at a time. Went out last night at Freedom City Surf for abut 30min also.

If that starts to happen, it will hasten my purchase of Tesla Powerwalls to compliment my solar panels. Then WAPA won't get the benefit of all the free power I generate for them when I go completely off the grid.

I am under impression that the frequency of WAPA outages has increased dramatically over last 10 days. I recall losing power twice a week on average over last three months. Last 10 days at least 3-4 times per day for hours at a time. Is WAPA on the war path with customers or commission?

I have a generator but not keep it on automatic. I don't need the power when I am not home. So it is quite annoying when I am back from work at night and the house is dark. This really is a third world country. Such a shame.

One of these days there will be a big explosion and WAPA will blow itself up.

One of these days there will be a big explosion and WAPA will blow itself up.

And then we can start from scratch. There must be a better way. Right now reliability of electric is like in Cuba or rural Nepal. The blackout in the evening lasted 2.5 hours.

Last night my power line caught fire, then dropped to the ground... fire dept came out and wapa not to long after to fix the line.

I was pretty impressed...

There are options. You can generate your own power and go completely off the grid. You'll be better off. WAPA is only going to get worse. I'm more than half way there now with 30 solar panels. I just need to install the battery storage.

on the radio they said they had to do rolling power outages in stt/stj due to increased demand that blew a generator? did i hear correctly or did i miss something?

i dont understand. did the same amount of people all of a sudden use a crap load more electricity? pretty sure the population of these islands has not increased sufficiently for this to be the cause of this latest failure

incompetent people make lame excuses.......

on the radio they said they had to do rolling power outages in stt/stj due to increased demand that blew a generator? did i hear correctly or did i miss something?

i dont understand. did the same amount of people all of a sudden use a crap load more electricity? pretty sure the population of these islands has not increased sufficiently for this to be the cause of this latest failure

but now we have wind and solar attached... which DRAMATICALLY changes the demand profile.

When the wind dies and some clouds move in (but its still "hot" and those people in big houses are running AC) the spike in demand can be so rapid and harsh it's very hard on an older infrastructure that's designed for more continuous output and predictable demand.

You can thank a lot of these issues for poorly implemented "net metering" (as well as all the other "poorly" done things).

I don't know anything about grid engineering to comment about design or competence of WAPA but from the end user perspective I know that the frequency of outages and damage to electrical appliances I experience here is extraordinary.

Furthermore, having government run utility, hospital, factory is fundamentally wrong. It has not worked for Soviet Union, Europe's Eastern Block, Communist China, Cuba and Venezuela. Why make the same mistake as opposed learning something from history? Such a government arrogance can only be perpetuated in societies with naive, uneducated electorate or by oppressive, self serving dictatorial regime.

http://www.publicpower.org/files/PDFs/USElectricUtilityIndustryStatistics.pdf

In the US, the vast majority of electric utilities are publicly owned (60.9%) and another 26% are cooperatives. Only 5.7% of electric utilities are investor owned.

However, investor owned utilities provide electric service to the majority of customers in the US (68.4%).

WAPA would count among the many publicly owned utilities in the US.

Such a government arrogance can only be perpetuated in societies with naive, uneducated electorate or by oppressive, self serving dictatorial regime.

You nailed it...sounds just like the Virgin Islands!

Is there anywhere on the WAPA bill that shows the meter reading to be able to compare to what my meter actually shows?

When the wind dies and some clouds move in (but its still "hot" and those people in big houses are running AC) the spike in demand can be so rapid and harsh it's very hard on an older infrastructure that's designed for more continuous output and predictable demand.

They need to implement more (any?) storage capacity in the grid to offset mother nature's moods. There's a lot of technology for this for example massive flywheels (great for those short term spikes), compressed gas, the age old elevated water storage (hmmm, do we have any mountains we can find a spot to stick a large water tank on hidden under the trees?) Of course that all costs money too.

Furthermore, having government run utility, hospital, factory is fundamentally wrong. It has not worked for Soviet Union, Europe's Eastern Block, Communist China, Cuba and Venezuela. Why make the same mistake as opposed learning something from history?

I'm not advocating for the government run utility or hospitals however I don't know that it's a valid comparison between tiny 134 sq miles Virgin Islands and the huge Soviet Union or even Cuba. Sometimes when things scale below a certain threshold they require different management techniques than the larger scale. Government run factories-certainly not.

Is there anywhere on the WAPA bill that shows the meter reading to be able to compare to what my meter actually shows?

Yes. I'm too lazy to get up at the moment and look at my paper bill but if you log in to your account online you can see the most recent meter reading and date on the Consumption Reports screen. I wined about WAPA breaking this recently on their new web site but it looks like they just fixed it yesterday or today. The rest of the screen will show all the previous monthly usage.

Thanks Scubadoo. I found an old paper bill and see it. It looks as though they gave me a new meter this month as my meter number changed on this months bill. So it looks like the reading is super low in the online consumption page which is why I missed it the first time. I will be checking out this new meter as I already had a digital meter before. Not sure why they would need to install a new one. I net meter solar so now I'm a bit worried about this meter number change. I will also start checking my meter every day or 2 to verify my bills. It sucks we have to be so diligent on such things here.

So has anyone gotten a WAPA bill for last month? I still haven't gotten a bill and their web site says they haven't read the meter yet or posted a bill. And the lights are still on.

We got our bill & believe it or not it was correct. 😀

Mine has been correct for the past two months and under $100.

I am astounded that, with all of the wind and rain on STX yesterday and last night, that there was no power outage (at least on Hermon Hill)!!!

I am astounded that, with all of the wind and rain on STX yesterday and last night, that there was no power outage (at least on Hermon Hill)!!!

Several power outages actually. Kings hill area & Fredericksted.

We were out mid island from 3pm to 9:30pm. At least it was chilly out.

La Grande Princess area also same power outage time as mid island. No power from mid Monday afternoon till about 9:30pm.

Just got my bill for my condo ouch! Looks like a new meter as the number is different but also have two rates now, one for first 250 KWH and one for over that, anybody else seeing this? Of course I tried to call WAPA but no answer. Curious about the 2 different rates as this is the first I have ever seen it, one rate for a lot more than last bill and then next a lot lot more for overage

Just got my bill for my condo ouch! Looks like a new meter as the number is different but also have two rates now, one for first 250 KWH and one for over that, anybody else seeing this? Of course I tried to call WAPA but no answer. Curious about the 2 different rates as this is the first I have ever seen it, one rate for a lot more than last bill and then next a lot lot more for overage

Effective 2/1/2017
Residential
$0.3234/kWh (first 250kWh)
$0.3496/kWh (all other kWh)

Commercial
$0.3885/kWh

Prior rate was $0.2927/kWH

Still no bill for me.