The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Chief Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Power and Light (BPL) officials said they are working to complete repairs this week on “several key assets” at its Clifton Pier power station to increase power supply in New Providence after a series of power outages this month.

The most recent outages affected parts of eastern New Providence last week, which officials blamed on several “faults” discovered by crews on the Eastern Road thoroughfare.

Arnette Ingraham, a senior manager at BPL, blamed recent road paving exercises for the faults and noted that not every power cut is a result of load-shedding.

“Our crews had to go in and fix a number of faults,” she told The Tribune yesterday. “So even when they fixed one, they would find another one and that really exacerbated the problem in the eastern road area.”

“And then if I could point to one that we had also where there was a long outage in the southeastern New Providence, south-western New Providence area Cowpen Road, it stretched for a while. We had somebody hit an HV line that had every single utility almost tied to it, so when things like that happen, people tend to think that it’s a load-shedding exercise, but those things are out of our control. All we can try to do is get to work right away as we always do to try to get everything back online.”

Ms Ingraham said BPL hadn’t conducted a load-shedding exercise since last Thursday but warned that load-shedding could happen if the company loses a unit or faces unforeseen circumstances.

She said the team anticipates getting at least 60MW of generation back on the grid by June and is confident BPL could meet summer demands with its current contingencies in place.

“We’re doing our best to make sure that we keep those units online, but they are aged and when things happen, especially when they’re working in over- drive during heightened heat conditions, the potential exists that they could go offline,” she said.

“What we do is that we work, our team works around the clock to make sure that they can get those units back up and running.”

Earlier this month, BPL reported widespread outages across New Providence as it struggled with “unprecedented” demand for that time of the year.

Several consumers have claimed the outages left them with damaged or destroyed appliances.

When asked how many complaints the company had received in recent weeks, Ms Ingraham could not say but noted that damage claims are submitted to BPL daily.

“It is an active process,” she said. “We have damaged claims submitted daily to BPL, and we review them and those that we consider legitimate claims; it is BPL’s job to honour them.”

She said the company does not honour claims for damages caused by adverse weather or traffic accidents.

“So, what we always encourage our customers to do is do what is necessary to protect your property. One of the first and primary steps is looking at the grounding in your home, especially when you have an older house,” she added.

“We also encourage our customers to take out insurance on pricey appliances, electronics, to make sure that in the event that there is any loss like lightning or some activity where BPL doesn’t cover it, the homeowner or the owner of that property is not at a loss.”