Roadworks trigger power cuts

Tue, Sep 13th 2011, 09:36 AM

The Bahamas Electricity Corporation underwent another spate of power outages this past weekend due to underground lines being severed, BEC Chairman Michael Moss told The Nassau Guardian yesterday.
Moss said BEC had several issues in both eastern and western New Providence with high voltage cables being cut by construction workers.
"There were at least three or four in the vicinity of Baha Mar and a couple in the west and any number involving the New Providence road works," Moss said.
He said the power outage involved construction workers cutting in to 33,000 volt cables buried in the ground.
"I'm surprised there have been no serious injuries," Moss said.
The corporation's press officer Arnette Ingraham added that two generators tripped and were out for a period of less than 30 minutes. "It lasted less than half an hour," she said.
According to Ingraham, mother nature also played a role in some power outages over the weekend as well, with lightning strikes causing several outages.
She explained, however, that BEC typically shuts its systems down during a lightening storm in order to prevent any irreparable damage to equipment or damage not easy to be quickly fixed.
Ingraham said in all of the cases, repair crews were sent out right away to correct any issues.
BEC has been criticized this summer for not being able to keep the power on.
Its executives have continuously cited generator failure for the inordinate amount of power outages in the past several months. And those frequent outages have been blamed on the years of maintenance the corporation's large generators at Clifton Pier have missed because of financial issues.
BEC spent $3 million recently to rent additional generators that were to produce 20 megawatts of supplementary power.
Moss said the generators were brought online two weeks ago and have allowed BEC to take generators offline at the Clifton Pier power plant for service.
"It is helping because we had to put overhauls on hold because of the tight generation demand," he said.  "Now we have been able to resume taking units out of service for maintenance."
Moss said BEC will have the supplementary generators for 13 weeks.
He added that BEC will begin taking generators at the Blue Hills power plant out of service for overhauls this week.
Moss explained that the extra 20 megawatts coupled with a temperature reduction as the season changes in the next few weeks, will allow BEC to complete generator overhauls.
"The weather should soon be cooling off and demand will be reducing," he said.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian

 Sponsored Ads