Welcome to Bahamas Local, Your Bahamas Online Search Engine

LOAD SHEDDING NOT THIS SUMMER: Bannister confident power supplies won't face planned outages

Fri, Jun 18th 2021, 08:43 AM
Politics Tribune Stories

DEPUTY Prime Minister and Minister of Works Desmond Bannister expressed confidence yesterday that Bahamas Power and Light will not implement load shedding this summer.

He said the electricity provider can safely account for between 215 and 350 megawatts during the summer, more than the anticipated peak load of 250mw.
#While acknowledging there have been no load shedding incidents this year, Mr Bannister noted there have been power outages that have shaken the confidence some have in BPL.
#He said some of the outages have been caused by challenging weather events.
#He added: “Some have been caused by careless drivers knocking power poles down. Outages over the past two days were caused by the unfortunate fire on Monday night. And quite frankly, others have been caused by human error. BPL is working to improve its transmission and distribution capabilities to decrease the number of outages, and they know that I expect that appropriate action will be taken when outages are caused as a result of human error.”
#Mr Bannister said electricity bills are also “lower than any of us can remember” because of BPL’s hedging strategy.
#Mr Bannister also discussed indicators that he said show that the quality of BPL’s services have been improving, including the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) – the average outage duration for each customer measured in units of time.
#“BPL has demonstrated a consistent and remarkable improvement in reliability using the SAIDI index,” he said. “So far this year, BPL is consistently and significantly under the target duration set for each month. This year, the outages our customers had to endure were on average far shorter than anticipated.”
#The System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) is another reliability indicator he highlighted. It captures the average number of interruptions customers experience and is measured in units of interruptions per customer. Mr Bannister said BPL this year has experienced “a far smaller number of outages than anticipated.”

He said the electricity provider can safely account for between 215 and 350 megawatts during the summer, more than the anticipated peak load of 250mw.

While acknowledging there have been no load shedding incidents this year, Mr Bannister noted there have been power outages that have shaken the confidence some have in BPL.

He said some of the outages have been caused by challenging weather events.

He added: “Some have been caused by careless drivers knocking power poles down. Outages over the past two days were caused by the unfortunate fire on Monday night. And quite frankly, others have been caused by human error. BPL is working to improve its transmission and distribution capabilities to decrease the number of outages, and they know that I expect that appropriate action will be taken when outages are caused as a result of human error.”

Mr Bannister said electricity bills are also “lower than any of us can remember” because of BPL’s hedging strategy.

Mr Bannister also discussed indicators that he said show that the quality of BPL’s services have been improving, including the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) – the average outage duration for each customer measured in units of time.

“BPL has demonstrated a consistent and remarkable improvement in reliability using the SAIDI index,” he said. “So far this year, BPL is consistently and significantly under the target duration set for each month. This year, the outages our customers had to endure were on average far shorter than anticipated.”

The System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) is another reliability indicator he highlighted. It captures the average number of interruptions customers experience and is measured in units of interruptions per customer. Mr Bannister said BPL this year has experienced “a far smaller number of outages than anticipated.”

 

Click here to read more at The Tribune

 Sponsored Ads