The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

Bahamas Power & Light said yesterday it expects to complete repairs on two of its power-generating engines at the Clifton Pier plant today.

The power utility provider had warned customers on Friday to expect power outages over the weekend because of engine problems that have been plaguing the former Bahamas Electricity Corporation for most of the summer.

Arnette Ingraham, Corporate Communications Manager, said yesterday that repairs “will be complete on both machines as early as Monday, August 8th”.

“We anticipated needing about 230 plus megawatts of generation over the weekend especially during our peak hours of between 6pm and 11pm. This would have meant that we would have had a generation shortfall causing us to implement a 2 hour outage rotation. In anticipation of this, we informed our customers via the media and Facebook.”

She said: “Fortunately, by containing the forced outages to large commercial customers we were able to drastically limit how many residential customers were impacted and for how long. Customers were impacted by outages between 8pm and 11pm on Friday night and some customers experienced outages during the daytime on Saturday (another typical peak period).”

Mrs Ingraham said there were no generation related outages on Saturday night and up to 3pm on Sunday. BPL did note that a small numbers of customers were affected by outages in Winton and on West Bay Street (Love Beach area) on the weekend, but they were not related to non-generation related outages.

Last month, former State Minister for Environment Phenton Neymour said to turn BPL/BEC around into an efficient company would require at least $200 million from government.

Mr Neymour claimed that the previous Ingraham administration had a proposal to purchase the necessary generators that would power the island without problems.

Following the 2012 election, he said, the current government cancelled the remaining two of three purchases for generations and opted to rent generators notwithstanding their criticism of the previous government opting to do the same.

He said this action resulted in the shortfall in New Providence’s power supply as Clifton Pier, already hampered by poor maintenance, does not have the 40 to 60 megawatts it needs to function effectively.