Christie seeks answers on island-wide blackout

Tue, Jul 8th 2014, 12:49 AM

Following an island-wide blackout on Thursday night and Friday morning, Prime Minister Perry Christie said yesterday he is still "puzzled" about why there was a complete failure of the Bahamas Electricity Corporation's (BEC) system.
"I am still puzzled as to how you can have an island-wide failure," Christie said.
"No system is supposed to totally collapse at the same time.
"The confluence of the events puzzled me as to how it happened.
"It is something that we are looking into and I have spoken to the powers that be, and you know, it is a matter that we have to avoid.
"I said last week, as a result of what happened in terms of discussions I had, I felt so good about the future of the country.
"As a result of the meetings I had last night (Sunday) I feel substantially better than I felt last week."
Christie said those meetings were regarding investments in The Bahamas.
He did not say whether they were specifically about the reform of the energy sector.
Christie and a ministerial delegation were in Antigua and Barbuda attending the 35th Regular Meeting of the Conference of the Heads of Government of CARICOM at the time of the island-wide blackout.
The prime minister said he learned about the blackout around 10 p.m. on Thursday and contacted BEC Executive Chairman Leslie Miller every 45 minutes up until shortly before 4 a.m. for updates.
Thousands of New Providence residents and business establishments suffered significant inconveniences as a result of the blackout, which started after 9 p.m. Thursday and extended into Friday morning.
As of 11 a.m. Friday, around 15 percent of the corporation's customers were still off the grid, according to officials.
BEC advised that the complete shutdown of its system was initiated by the failure of a main transmission cable near the Blue Hills Power Station.
On Friday, the corporation warned customers that more blackouts would occur.
In a statement on Saturday, the corporation said it was working on several generators on the weekend, which may have affected service.
The corporation said BEC teams along with specialists, who were called in to assist, were remedying some of the technical issues that recently developed.
BEC officials have come under fire for intermittent service and outages this summer so far, the most recent of which the corporation blamed on inclement weather.
On June 25, thousands of customers were left in darkness after lightning struck a generator at the Clifton Pier Power Station, according to Miller.

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