The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Bahamas Power and Light’s (BPL) chief executive yesterday conceded that the troubled utility monopoly was doing as much as it can “with limited means”, and required investment equivalent to “10 per cent of the total value of our fleet”.

Pam Hill, outlining a four to six-month timeline for investment in BPL’s infrastructure and equipment, said the company was focusing on the necessary steps to stablise its system for summer 2017.

“We’re working as much as we can with what we already have,” she said. “We are of limited means. I don’t think that will surprise anyone. We are a utility that has had its share of economic challenges over the past several years.

“We’re working hard within those means, and where additional means are required we’re very straightforward and present our case in terms of talking though the implications and requirements. I think it will all come together.”   

Bahamian consumers may have a different view. On Sunday, New Providence was impacted by a power outage that lasted up to six hours.

Ms Hill said this stemmed from an issue at BPL’s Clifton Pier power plant, and explained: “At Clifton Pier we had an issue with one of the power plants, and it led to us starting to think about how we could very quickly make sure to try and prevent a major outage.

“When that issue flared up we were looking to see how to ensure it didn’t cascade into a major outage. We took some immediate measures but what ended up happening was our worst fears.

“Upon taking those measures, within four to five minutes one of our cables became overloaded. That led to an outage occurring island-wide. When we had the outage at Clifton, most  of our customers were still on, but unfortunately most of our customers did end up going off and that outage ended up more challenging than it appeared, so it took a while longer for us to restore power.”

Last Thursday, BPL blamed a “damaged underground cable” for blackouts on Tuesday and Wednesday, and customers were warned at the time that they may experience “intermittent challenges with their power supply until operations have stabilised”.

PowerSecure took over management of BPL, formerly BEC, earlier this year, before it was itself sold to energy giant, Southern Company, for $431 million.

“In the coming few months I think you can expect to see some additional investment in the system, strengthening those underground  cables, overhead lines and strengthening our plants at Clifton as well as Blue Hills, both the generation in terms of outages and making sure that those are planned outages, and making sure that we strengthen the training of employees,” said Ms Hill.

“What we are doing is focusing particularly on what’s going to be needed on stablising the system this coming summer. It’s not that Spring doesn’t count and this winter doesn’t count, but we need to use this lower load period - when there is not as much strain on the system - to take advantage of that time period.

“The real investments are going to be happening over the next four to six month period. I’ll say the ball park figure is probably a good 10 per cent or so of the total value of the investment that we have now in our fleet.”