The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Many New Providence businesses were hit by a Friday power outage lasting several hours after Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) suffered “a generator trip” at both the island’s power stations.

Marvin Storr, owner/operator of Peak Ltd, told Tribune Business his electricity supply was off from 11am and had not been restored by up to 1pm on Friday afternoon. “This has disrupted my whole day because I work from home and batteries lasts only for a couple of hours,” he said.

“Most of my work got done Friday morning before the power went off. But businesswise, I had two calls today I needed to postpone. At least one of them I was trying to get a deal closed, which is revenue. These things are time sensitive, so if you don’t strike while the iron is hot then sometimes you lose out.”

A BPL spokesman, contacted about the power outage, which affected multiple areas in eastern New Providence, said: “We experienced a generator trip at both power stations. It was caused by a system disturbance. The teams are assessing now.” Electricity supply was restored later on Friday afternoon.

While businesses with access to their own generator supply were largely not impacted, one restaurant and bar had to revert to taking orders and recording payments manually. Jonice Smith, general manger of Out East Sports Bar & Lounge, said the electricity supply was lost for half the day, forcing staff to write orders manually, which “took up a lot of time”.

Ms Smith said: “All of our systems went down, so we had to do everything manually. We were able to serve guests but it took longer than it normally would because we had to write everything and then send it to the back.”

While not having to turn customers away, she said staff subsequently had to convert all the manual orders back to the point of sale system when power came back on. “We have to now figure out what not to make again,” she added.

Lisa Nabbie, general manager of Roberts & Sons Trucking, said that while generator supplier kicked-in automatically her main concern was whether any computer systems were fried because it “tends to happen” when BPL’s supply shuts off.