Miller to give answers on cause of BEC malfunction

BEC Chairman Leslie Miller

As of Wednesday, July 30, 2014

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Electricity Corporation Executive Chairman Leslie Miller said he will release a report today detailing exactly what caused BEC engines to malfunction on Monday, leaving more than 50 per cent of New Providence without electricity.

Mr Miller told The Tribune yesterday that BEC officials were still trying to determine exactly what caused two engines at the Blue Hills Power Station to shut down.

Thousands of BEC customers were without electricity for more than eight hours after “generator challenges” at the Blue Hills plant interrupted the supply in eastern, western and some parts of central New Providence.

Guests at Atlantis on Paradise Island were inconvenienced for some time as well due to the cuts, with power not being restored to parts of the hotel until 4pm.

According to BEC sources, a cable blew between the Big Pond substation and the Blue Hills Power Station causing the initial power outages in eastern and southern New Providence.

Power was eventually restored to those areas around 10:30am but there was another outage about an hour later after a small “explosion” at the Blue Hills plant, The Tribune was told. This time, in addition to eastern and southern New Providence, western parts of the island were affected.

Power was not fully restored to all affected areas until 1am yesterday. There were also reports of shorter power outages in pockets of New Providence yesterday.

Monday’s power failure was the third major power outage to affect the capital in three months.

Mr Miller is also expected to release the report today completed by the four American consultants hired to assess the challenges at the corporation after an earlier blackout.

“I was waiting on the final report, which will be done today and then I will hand it over to my Cabinet first before letting the public know what they recommended,” Mr Miller said.

Powersecure was retained following an island-wide power outage on July 3, which lasted up to 12 hours for some residents.

Mr Miller has declined to say how much taxpayers’ money would be used for their expertise. He would only say their services would be worth every penny spent.

Earlier this month he said Powersecure had been going through the system to see exactly what went wrong.

Mr Miller said: “They will tell us what took place and how the problem can be rectified and where the problem emanated from. They are also looking at our system and see what we have and what need to be upgraded. These guys specialise in this type of thing, they are the top four out of the United States in this field.”

GrassRoot 10 years, 4 months ago

Does anybody care, whether it was the Unions, a ladder or a rat that got fried? Being the Chairman of BEC and having to announce an announcement is just too funny. He thinks he is the Pope.I hope the Tribune does not feel obligated to report the most unimportant message of the day.

Well_mudda_take_sic 10 years, 4 months ago

The root cause of all of the major problems facing our country today is Christie. It is Christie alone who has appointed all of these morons in his cabinet because he is afraid that appointing anyone with an ounce of common sense would make himself (Christie) look bad by comparison. Christie, like Ingraham, would not survive a parliament loaded with fair minded parliamentarians of average or better intellect and it is this fact, more than any other, that voters must keep in mind in the candidate nomination process before every election. Never vote for the party....always vote for the fair minded candidate with something upstairs, even if he or she may be independent of the FNM, DNA or PLP....and simply don't vote at all if none of the candidates are fair minded with an average or better intellect. Never cast your vote for the lesser of two evils as evil is just plain evil..period!

Tarzan 10 years, 4 months ago

Unfortunately this is a parliamentary system. The party does matter. The members vote party line 99.9999% of the time.

I read screeds about how Mr. Ingraham and Mr. Christie are essentially the same guy in different suits in these pages all the time.

Excuse me but nothing could be further from accurate.

I am sure Mr. Ingraham made some mistakes, but he ran an essentially honest government. Mr. Ingraham saw the airport reconstruction to completion; he did modernize the road system; he did privatize the mobile phone company; and he did tell Mr. Nygard to take his money and stuff it.

Please enlighten me on one single thing the Christie Administration has accomplished or better yet, really even tried to accomplish?

sheeprunner12 10 years, 4 months ago

Still waiting for Perry's report from Brave............... BOL. Where is GM Kevin Basden??????? There must be at least ONE sensible senior executive at BEC................. SMDH