The Tribune

By RIEL MAJOR

Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) carried out another load shedding exercise yesterday that left customers in the eastern area of New Providence without power for almost six hours.

Quincy Parker, BPL’s Director of Public Relations, confirmed load shedding has persisted due to an issue with one of their sub-stations.

Mr Parker said: “We started load shedding at 10.53 am (on Tuesday) and all supplies were back on by 4.42pm and yesterday we had a substation go offline at about 2.19pm and that was in the Palmdale, Wulff Road, Kemp Road, Village Road and Marathon area and power was restored by 3.08pm.

“We are diligently working to ensure that the maintenance of our generation capacity is on schedule in order to reduce the number of load shedding occasions.”

Power to homes on Eastern Road was cut off just after 2pm for the second day running.

Mr Parker said load shedding is not something the company can plan for and usually happens when something interferes with their transmission and distribution system.

He said: “The most transparent path we can take is to inform people when we begin load shedding and say how long it’s going to be because it is not a planned thing.

“It is an inconvenience to everybody so we try to address it as quickly as possible on each occasion.”