The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Superwash’s principal yesterday asserted that the “dirty power” produced in The Bahamas is just as great a threat to business stability as last year’s 47.5 percent increase in electricity costs.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, the former Cabinet minister and MP, told Tribune Business that machine and equipment-intensive businesses such as his laundromat chain are forced to incur “tremendous” to protect themselves against the brown-outs, spikes and dips in voltage caused by Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) grid instability.

Revealing that an “electricity surge” once “blew out all the washers” at a particular Superwash location, he branded BPL as “far more dangerous” to business health than the likes of the Water & Sewerage Corporation whose repairs to the leaking water main serving eastern New Providence have impacted companies along a stretch of Prince Charles Drive for several days via road closures.

“The more impactful one is BPL. BPL impacts you in far more dangerous ways,” Mr D’Aguilar told this newspaper. “BPL produces a lot of dirty power, so surges, brown-outs and spikes. All of that impacts your laundry equipment. Heavy equipment has far more electrical components than it did 25 years ago.

“They are far more susceptible to brown-outs and spikes in electricity. The fact we have so much dirty power really impacts your business. What you have to spend as a business to provide back-up power and safeguard against spikes and dips in power is tremendous.”

These concerns further add to energy-related frustrations for the Bahamian private sector, with high costs fuelling further worries besides the reliability and consistency of supply. Mr D’Aguilar blamed the energy cost spike Superwash faced in 2023, due to the fuel component of electricity bills increasing by 163 percent in eight months, on the Davis administration’s failure to maintain BPL’s fuel hedging initiative.

“Superwash’s electricity expenses went up by 47.5 percent in 2023,” he blasted. “That’s much more impactful than customers being denied access to your business for a day or two because of a leaky pipe.

“You have to go out and buy these things known as voltage regulators, and they are very expensive. You have a generator to provide back-up power, and have to identify your locations where power is more often than not, not clean, and the most damage is caused by dips and spikes.

“You have to go out, identify the technology, then implement it. Sometimes it doesn’t work. I remember one location where we had a surge in electricity that blew out all the motors in all the washers in one go. We’ve had to mitigate against this,” Mr D’Aguilar continued.

“You have all these electrical boards in the washers. Everything is digital. That makes it more susceptible to surges and dips in power. That’s a far higher concern notwithstanding the 47.5 percent increase in costs. We all know why that happened. That’s the real cost of the [BPL fuel] hedge. The inability of them [the Government] to navigate the hedge.

“People all across the country have to put in designs to limit the surges and dips in voltage because of the damage to your equipment, motors and electric boards. That is hugely costly.” Mr D’Aguilar added that, even if it desired to, BPL has no money to compensate businesses and households for electrical equipment that has burnt up and “you have to eat it all the time”.

“You cannot operate a business in The Bahamas without a back-up generator,” he continued. “It’s impossible. You have to have to have a generator and automatic transfer switch. You have to maintain that, look after that and keep diesel fuel for it.”

Pointing out that, even with such devices, there was an 11-second delay between loss of BPL supply and the generator kicking-in, Mr D’Aguilar said the only way to avoid this was to employ a battery back-up at further expense. And, even when energy supply was restored, machines typically did not work as they did previously and have to be rebooted and reset.

“Power is a problem, a big, big problem, notwithstanding it’s horribly expensive,” the Superwash chief surmised. As for the Prince Charles Drive closure, caused by the need to repair the main Water & Sewerage Corporation pipe serving eastern New Providence, Mr D’Aguilar said: “Our customers couldn’t get too and from our location on Sunday.

“Sunday is typically one of our busiest days, but the fact Monday was a public holiday did alleviate that. Normally Sunday is the peak because people do their weekly loads on Sunday, but they instead did it on Monday. It didn’t significantly impact the ability of people to get to the business.

“We did go out and negotiate with the employees of the Water & Sewerage Corporation to create a pathway to Superwash which, after a bit of haggling, they did agree to accommodate and customers were allowed to trickle through. The ability of customers to get to that Prince Charles location was definitely impacted,” he added.

“While all these calamities are impactful for your business, this is what happens from time to time. This is what’s going to happen. There are going to be one or two calamities that arise, but every time you make it more difficult for a customer to use your business there’s got to be a certain amount of attrition.”