The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Grand Bahama Power Company is “not taking any chances”, its top executive is pledging, as it bids “to never experience another summer like we had” with demand set to rise by up to 10 mega watts (MW) in 2025.

Dave McGregor told Tribune Business that the utility’s largest generation unit, whose repeated mechanical failures were largely responsible for the load shedding and electricity outages that plagued Grand Bahama over the summer months, is set to return to service before Christmas after undergoing extensive repairs in Florida.

Confirming that GB Power has now “covered ourselves” sufficiently against further challenges by bringing in 24 MW of rental generation, he added that these units will now enable the island’s monopoly energy supplier to take some of its own engines out of the front-line for much-needed maintenance.

Speaking to this newspaper in a recent interview, Mr McGregor, GB Power’s president as well as Caribbean chief operating officer for Emera, the Canadian utility giant and its 100 percent owner, added that it is now “revisiting” its electricity generation plan to make sure all eventualities are covered in time for summer 2025’s peak load demand as he conceded “there’s a lot of work to do” to ensure sustained reliability.

And, with major investment projects such as Carnival Cruise Line’s $600m Celebration Cay private port set to begin operations next year, along with construction on Weller Development’s Six Senses resort, Mr McGregor forecast that GB Power will need to supply an extra 5-10 MW of power by mid to end-2025 to meet this new demand.

However, while this might place further pressure on GB Power’s generation capacity and reliability, Mr McGregor said the additional large customer are not all bad as their arrival will enable the utility to spread its fixed cost base over more subscribers and thus ease any pressure for rate hikes beyond those it is seeking approval for with its 2025-2028 tariff proposal.

GB Power acknowledged to key stakeholders and customers during a recent meeting that it will have to work hard to regain their trust, and Mr McGregor told Tribune Business: “We know our customers had a bit of a rough summer with reliability as we did. We have a plan, communicated that plan, are committed to that plan and are making sure our key stakeholders are committed to that plan.”

GB Power’s generation reliability and output has been “pretty stable since October 2”, with the summer outages and load shedding sharply reduced if not eliminated, and he added: “We’ve been really tracking it intensely. It’s back on track, but we still have a lot of work to do to make sure that reliability is sustained in years ahead.”

Mr McGregor attributed the summer woes to repeated mechanical breakdowns suffered by GB Power’s largest generating unit, Unit 33, which has the capacity to produce 18 MW and account for a significant portion of Grand Bahama’s 60 MW-plus peak demand during that period. It was initially repaired and restored to service, only to swiftly and unexpectedly fail again.

“The turbo charger failed,” the GB Power chief explained. “We brought that back to service but, unfortunately, we had a second failure with the same turbo charger a few weeks later. We’re projecting that unit to be back before Christmas in mid to the third week of December. 

“The parts are being rebuilt in Florida, and we should have them back or installed shortly. Unit 33 should be back up and running before Christmas.” Mr McGregor said GB Power’s peak load demand typically falls to the mid-30 MW range during the cooler winter weather, thus easing the generation demand strain.

“We’ve covered that,” he added of Unit 33’s 18 MW output. “All that rental generation we have in service, we have 24 MW of rental generation in place. We’re not going to leave it to chance. We will have issues from time to time with mechanical equipment, so we’ve made sure we have plenty of coverage so that we don’t experience the issues we had in the summer.

“We’ve still got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of maintenance work to do on our engines. We’re waiting for some parts, but we’ve covered ourselves with temporary generation. It was late getting here, but we now have cover for all the units that need maintenance. We have a bit of work to do, but I’m comfortable we will not have the load shedding that we had in summer because we have the cover of temporary generation.”

Still, Mr McGregor confirmed that GB Power is “having another look at our 18-month generation plan” to ensure there is no repeat of the frequent outages and load shedding endured by Grand Bahama residents and businesses during the summer months.

“We’re seeing a bit of load growth in Freeport,” he added. “We’ve revisited our 18-month generation plan. We think we will need more generation in before next summer. Whether that’s temporary generation or we purchase our own generation units, we are still working that out, but we will make sure we never experience a summer like we had... with reliability so we will be shoring up generation.”

Increased electricity demand associated with economic growth driven by major investment projects is only adding to the urgency of this effort. Mr McGregor acknowledged that “it all adds up” with Carnival’s port project likely to require “a couple of MW” and meetings planned with the Six Senses development to “understand the load there”. Grand Bahama Shipyard’s two new dry docks will further add to energy demand.

“I think there’s a good 5-10 MW there that needs to be secured by the middle to end of 2025,” he told Tribune Business. “The completed Celebration Cay, we look forward to that. We already have supply to them for construction. More people pay less for power, not less people pay more. It’s that volume that helps to stabilise rates.”

Mr McGregor added that GB Power’s mobile sub-station, which he described as “switches and transformers on a truck”, will provide the utility with greater “flexibility” and the ability to swiftly replace fixed sub-stations that may be damaged during future hurricanes.

Noting that there are eight to nine existing sub-stations on Grand Bahama, he said: “If we have a failure with one of those, which could be a switch gear or transformer, the mobile sub-station could deploy to that location and give us a lot more flexibility.

“It could give us much more flexibility in future storm recovery efforts if we lose a sub-station because of hurricane damage. It could be wheeled into place to provide sub-station services anywhere. It’s a flexible asset.”

Mr McGregor conceded at the recent meeting with Grand Bahama stakeholders that the utility must work to regain consumer confidence following the summer outages and load shedding. “Over the past months you have faced disruption caused by generation shortfalls,” he said.

“While we have worked diligently to address these issues we do understand that this has not been enough. Today, I want to assure you that we are taking bold steps to rebuild your trust and deliver more reliable and affordable power infrastructure.”