The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Power and Light chairman Dr Donovan Moxey has called for consumers to “bear” with the company following several recent power outages in New Providence, insisting the electricity provider is doing “ everything” it can to improve service.

He insisted this was not due to load shedding amid consumer scepticism of the situation.

Dr Moxey spoke out after several communities experienced service disruptions on Sunday due to an issue at BPL’s Blue Hills Power Station.

Again, yesterday, some communities experienced a repeat of the day before with hours-long service interruptions.

Yesterday, the BPL chairman told reporters Sunday’s power outage was caused by a disruption at one of BPL’s substations, which in turn affected the electricity provider’s entire transmission and distribution network.

“The outages you’ve seen has not been due to load shedding at all and so the outage last night was actually due to a T and D (transmission and distribution) event,” Dr Moxey said at a press conference. “There was a disruption on one of our substations and what ended up happening is that particular fault propagated through the entire network.

“It should have not propagated the way it did. Obviously, our engineers are looking at that to determine why it propagated and so from our perspective, we’re looking to make whatever changes need to be made so that whenever those kind of faults occur, we can contain those and really minimise the impact on our particular customers.”

Areas affected on Sunday included Millennium Gardens, Little Blair, Fox Hill, High Vista, Mount Vernon, Kool Acres, Pinewood Gardens and Garden Hills among others.

Many BPL customers expressed their frustration with the energy supplier on the company’s facebook page, complaining that they had been left without power for hours.

Mr Moxey acknowledged Bahamians’ frustrations and called for members of the public to bear with the company as it seeks to address issues.

He said a lack of funding has made it difficult for the company to conduct critical infrastructural upgrades.

“It goes to the fact that we don’t necessarily have the latest and greatest components in our T and D network but obviously, we’re working to do all of the relevant detection settings so that we can essentially be able to identify and contain faults very, very quickly. So, it’s one of those things where you’re trying to do the best that we possibly can with the significant infrastructure recognising that you cannot make the significant investments that are required to make a smarter and more hardier network until you can get the funding closed.

“We certainly understand the frustration of our customers and obviously we’re asking you to bear with us.

“Obviously, you’re paying for a service and you’re expecting a good quality service and so what I can say is we’re going to do everything we can in order to continue to try to improve the services as best we possibly can.”

Yesterday, BPL officials also addressed service disconnections in the country amid the pandemic, noting the company has seen a significant decline in that regard for the year.

BPL CEO, Whitney Heastie said at last report, less than 3,000 residential accounts in New Providence and the Family Islands had been turned off.

“In terms of service accounts, the last we had was under 3,000 that are currently not on the grid. I think what we have seen with the new rates is that number has dropped drastically,” Mr Heastie told reporters.

“And so, we’re proud that not only people are being able to take advantage of consuming a little bit more power but our load, as you mentioned, is getting really high. Certainly, we typically see about 250 megawatts this time of the year, sorry for our peak which typically happens in the August timeframe.”

He added: “We’ve already seen 245 in July and so that’s an indication that not only are people going back to normality in terms of what they’re consuming but folks feel very comfortable that they can pay their bills.

“We’ve also seen in terms of collections that we have not had a major issue with 30–60-day collections so that’s all positive signs that not only the economy is recovering but people are comfortable with not only consuming power but making their payments.”

In March 2020, BPL halted disconnections in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the company initially saying it would suspend disconnections as long as the government maintained the COVID-19 emergency orders.

However, the government-owned utility later resumed disconnections after it had announced last July that it would discontinue electricity services of customers who were $500 or more in arrears, and 90 days past due, prior to April 1.

Last October, a BPL official told The Tribune that the company had turned off 8,741 residential accounts in New Providence and the Family Islands since July 2020.

However, a few days later it backtracked on the previous statement saying the actual number of disconnections stood at 3,011 as of October 23, 2020, as a large number of customers had been reconnected.

Meanwhile, as it relates to BPL’s union issues, Mr Moxey said yesterday officials have been working to address the problems.