The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business

Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE PRIVATE sector is hopeful that Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) will “sooner rather than later” remedy long standing issues such as power blackouts, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) chief executive said yesterday in the wake of Sunday’s New Providence-wide power outage.

Edison Sumner told Tribune Business that given the history of frequent power supply disruptions in the summer months, the private sector was “naturally concerned”.

“We have seen the impact that this has had over the past several years where operations on the island come to a halt because businesses do not have power and not every business has a back up regenerator or alternative means of energy,” said Mr Sumner.

“We accept that BPL is new to the game and they are still just trying to get their feet wet so to speak. They have a new CEO at the helm now. We said we would give them the benefit of the doubt coming in. We are hopeful that the time they would have spent examining BEC coming into the reform process, that they would come in very quickly with a plan and share that plan with us, to let us know how they are going to address these vexing issues. We hope that BPL can address these issues sooner rather than later. To wait for a year or more for that to happen I think is an unreasonable expectation for us in the private sector.”

On February 9, PowerSecure signed a five-year management services agreement with the Government to run BPL, the Bahamas Electricity Corporation’s (BEC) newly-created operating subsidiary. Then, on February 25, PowerSecure announced that the Atlanta-based utility giant, Southern Company, would acquire it for $431 million, with PowerSecure becoming a become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Southern Company.

Jeff Wallace, BPL’s CEO resigned suddenly in March for ‘personal reasons’. Earlier this month Pam Hill, who most recently served as vice president of retail sales support at Exelon Corporation, a Fortune 150 energy company headquartered Chicago, Illinois, was appointed BPL CEO.

Mr Sumner said that the Chamber was looking forward to meeting with the BPL team to find out their plans on the way forward. “We are looking forward to having a meeting withe the new leadership team at BPL. We have already reached out to them. We expect to engage with them very shortly, within the next week and a half to sit down and talk to them and have them share their plans are not only for energy security and continuity but also for the entire energy management structure in the country. It’s also important for us to understand how they are going to address the private sector, those businesses that have lost revenue because they can not serve their customers as well as the equipment which gets damaged and the losses are not covered by insurance. BEC traditionally has not been very open in dealing with these matters. We are prepared to work with them and ensure that we get resiliency in power.”

He added: “Coming into this market we believe BPL should have come in with a plan of action from day one. We understand that they have had some changes at the top with the CEOs but we expected that there should have been a plan to address these issues. These matters are not new to us. These are recurring and frustrating issues that have been going on for years. It is important for us to however understand what their challenges are. I still don’t think we have an appreciation for the challenges behind the scenes. We have heard about antiquated equipment and we have heard about labour issues in the past.”

BPL reported on Sunday that a “major cable fault” was the reason for an island-wide blackout that occurred on Sunday afternoon. According to a statement released by BPL’s public relations officer Arnette Ingraham, the cable fault “was responsible for shutting down generation, transmission and distribution networks on the island”. The blackout occurred shortly before 1pm and lasted several hours.

In a statement yesterday afternoon BPL advised its New Providence customers that it is still trying to stabilise its system. BPL said that the event also impacted the organistion’s reserve supply in New Providence, meaning that the present generation can only meet existing demand. “As a result, challenges with an engine at Clifton Pier Power Station on Monday morning resulted in a generation shortfall impacting approximately 20 per cent of customers at varying times throughout the morning and early afternoon on Monday. Repairs to that engine were completed around 2pm and supply was restored to all impacted customers by 2.40 on Monday afternoon. In the meantime, BPL is looking to complete repairs on its reserve engine before the end of the week and plans are underway to increase overall system reliability within the next few weeks and throughout the summer,” BPL said in its statement yesterday.

The company apologised to its customers impacted by the recent outages and pledged its full commitment to the ongoing improvement of its service across the country.