An additional 40 megawatts of rented power generation came online at Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) on Sunday, according to BPL Corporate Communications Manager Arnette Ingraham.

For months, BPL officials contended that the company would bring in more rented power to address summer demand and prevent rolling blackouts.

During an interview with The Nassau Guardian yesterday, Ingraham said the highly anticipated rental generation at the company's Blue Hills power station came online on Sunday afternoon.

Though it is good news, Ingraham clarified that the additional generation does not mean that there will not be any more blackouts; rather, she said, it will limit the outages caused by generation failures.

"Not every outage that we have on the island is actually caused by the generation challenge," she said.

"There are other things that cause outages, so I don't want people to think that all of a sudden we will never have any power outages."

Ingraham said outages can be caused by car accidents, transformer failures or engine failures.

But the hope is that residents won't see outages caused by generation failures anytime soon.

"Let's say we have an engine failure at Clifton Pier or Blue Hills, that doesn't mean we have a generation shortfall anymore," she said.

"However when that engine goes down, a few people can experience an outage for a couple of minutes or maybe about 30 minutes or so until we get another unit to supply them with power.

"The majority of outages people would have seen in the summer would have been a direct result of generation shortfall. That means an engine went down and we did not have anything to replace it with.

"But now, if an engine goes down, we have something to replace it with."

The rental generation has been flown in from Australia, Denmark, Panama, Dubai and other countries.

In addition to limiting the number of outages that come as a result of generation shortfalls, the rental generation now gives the company the opportunity to maintain older equipment.

In New Providence, the peak demand from BPL customers sits at 237 megawatts.

As of Sunday, the company's operating capacity is now at 295 megawatts, Ingraham said.

Jayme C. Pinder, Guardian Staff Reporter

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