The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamian private sector continues to suffer a “great level of frustration” over the frequency of productivity-inhibiting power blackouts, the Chamber’s chief executive yesterday urging businesses to invest in renewable energy as a back-up plan.

Edison Sumner told Tribune Business yesterday: “The business sector has expressed a great level of frustration over the frequent power outages because it has always had a direct impact on productivity in business, the comfort and convenience of staffing, businesses having to turn away customers and close their doors, having to lose inventory.”

He added: “One of the things  we are now recommending is that the smaller business people, particularly, invest in alternative energy sources or renewable energy sources as a contingency, making an investment in obtaining generators or solar panels so that they can have some level of redundancy power for themselves.

“For many of them it is going to be a sacrifice, but if you look at business continuity planning then we must start to think along those lines. I think it will also help to relieve the pressure on the grid now. If some of the larger companies were to get off the grid to some degree, it may allow for there to be more capacity to be shared between others on the grid.”

Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) said earlier this week it had stopped its power outage rotations (load shedding) in New Providence “for now”, and is in a “safe zone” after returning two engines on line.

Additional rental generators, able to produce 40 Mega Watts (MW) of energy, should be in the country in “a few weeks”.

BPL announced “outage rotations” throughout New Providence earlier this month, as it continued to grapple with “generation challenges” at its power stations.

Since then, it has been load shedding intermittently, but there had been numerous power cuts before that.

Pam Hill, BPL’s chief executive, blamed the outages on a lack of proper maintenance for its aging equipment, as well as extreme heat.

“We understand clearer what the challenges are and we are hopeful that the new management company at BPL will get the necessary resources to make this happen quickly. We have had at least two meetings with the CEO. We hope these challenges can be addressed sooner rather than later,” said Mr Sumner.