The Tribune

By Annelia Nixon

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) executives yesterday revealed that Eleuthera will experience “a little bit of growing pain” as the utility initiates a 90-day plan to resolve the island’s frequent power outages.

Christina Alston, BPL’s chair, said the utility is aiming to resolve deficiencies with the island’s transmission and distribution system while also installing more generation capacity than last year. Arnette Ingraham, BPL’s spokesperson, added that the initiative will involved planned outages so BPL can conduct the necessary work.

“There’s going to be a lot of work on the ground to make sure that we can upgrade the islands and make sure that we’re ready for our summer loads,” Ms Ingraham said, “so that what residents and customers in Eleuthera would have experienced in past summers, and even in the last few months, they won’t be experiencing any more.

“But for us to get there, there’s going to be a little bit of growing pain. So what’s going to happen is that we’re going to be taking a number of outages on the island so customers will see that the power is going to be going in the next couple of days. But we will be sending out a schedule in advance, at least 48 hours notice.

“Our customers will know when we plan to take an outage so that we can do that much-needed work on our grid to make sure that it’s ready for the summer load and customers won’t experience what they’ve seen in the past in terms of unplanned outages that are for large durations and just happen so frequently on the island.”

Ms Ingraham said Eleuthera, as well as every other island in The Bahamas, is BPL’s priority so it is using the “cooler months” in winter as its summer readiness period to ensure maintenance is done.

“As a part of our summer readiness programme, we’ve actually had an entire engineering team on the ground since early January,” Ms Alston added. “We have a gentleman, his name is Francis Frank, and he is a grid modernisation expert. He comes to us from Pennsylvania Power and Light. And all of this is being done in a way to make sure that we can bring Eleuthera up to the standards that we need it to be for reliability.

“As an electrical engineer, I can tell you Eleuthera is a conundrum in terms of no other place will you see in the archipelago where you have load at various points on such a long distance. And because of that, those geographic challenges is what we’re trying to overcome.”

Ms Alston also spoke to the promised microgrids that will begin construction in Eleuthera and Abaco in the 2025 first quarter. She said there is an expected “ready for service” timeline of “probably closer to the end of this year, first quarter 2026”, and added that customers will be able to inform themselves about the microgrids and schedules pertaining to their installation via BPL’s website.

“So those projects will be coming online,” Ms Alston said. “What we’re looking at is what we call ready for service, probably closer to the end of this year, first quarter 2026... We are launching what is known as the ARC GIS storyboards on the BPL website.

“And you’ll actually be able to go on the website and, island by island, you’ll be able to learn about the micro grid, the schedule. You’ll be able to learn about the technology, you’ll be able to even learn about the vendor that is providing the work.”