Noting that the widespread power outages experienced by Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) consumers across multiple islands in recent months can have a negative impact on the Bahamian economy, the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) announced yesterday that it is investigating the outages.

"As the regulator for the electricity sector, URCA is concerned about the adverse effects these power outages have on national economic development, and residential and commercial consumers in particular," URCA said in a statement.

"In the past two months alone, significant outages have occurred in Abaco, Acklins, North Andros, Cat Island, Exuma, Mayaguana, and New Providence."

URCA noted that these outages resulted from a combination of generation and transmission failures, third party damage, and weather.

"URCA has requested and received outage reports for all these instances," the statement said.

In recent weeks, BPL has reported several power outages across New Providence. With the higher than usual heat index, New Providence residents have complained of unbearable conditions as a result.

As it relates to North Andros, up to yesterday BPL was still trying to restore power to all of the residents after last week's fire, which ripped through its power plant.

Minister of Works and Utilities Alfred Sears told the House of Assembly on Wednesday that the cause of the fire remained under investigation.

He noted that 90 percent of residents have electricity, while 10 percent were experiencing load shedding. Sears said work was ongoing to restore power to everyone affected.

The fire occurred last Wednesday and four Caterpillar diesel engines, along with a small concrete structure, were destroyed.

Though the statement did not mention Eleuthera, BPL customers on that island, between Governor's Harbour and Rock Sound, were without power caused by a transformer failure in the Governor's Harbour area earlier this week, BPL said.

"All things considered, URCA is satisfied with BPL's short-term actions to address the outages," URCA said in its statement.

"However, the quantity and nature of the outages paint a picture of a struggling utility unable to provide power of sufficient reliability and quality.

"This has negative impacts on the economy of The Bahamas and quality of life of its residents.

"URCA is working with the relevant stakeholders, with the aim of ensuring suitable plans of action are in place to provide a more durable solution to these issues."

The post URCA investigating BPL power outages appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.

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