The power outage around town to rural areas on Monday night was due to an issue with one of the main generators at the Moto’otua plant.
An official from the Electric Power Corporation told Radio Polynesia to date EPC generation engineers have yet to complete their report as to what was the source of the problem that caused the outage on Monday night.
However, the EPC official says once there is an issue the generator protection feature ignites and automatically turns off the power to save the generator from any damage.
In this specific outage, thousands of family homes and businesses were affected.
According to the EPC official, there were different times the power came back on and at Vailima where the celebration of the Treaty of Friendship between Samoa and New Zealand reception was held, on Monday night the power was out from 10:15 and power was back on at 10:35.
The hospital was also affected and the EPC official said about 20 minutes after the power was out it came back on.
Adding that the hospital does have its own back up generator, but he’s unclear as to why it didn’t automatically turn on when the power was out in that area.
