The Bahamas Electricity Corporation is 95 percent complete with resolving power issues that have plagued Harbour Island and North Eleuthera, according to its General Manager Kevin Basden. Addressing questions from the floor of the Energy Efficiency Forum and Exhibition on Friday, Basden said major control systems challenges at the Hatchet Bay power plant that services Harbour Island and North Eleuthera have been mostly addressed.
How far into the winter tourism season it will be before issues are 100 percent resolved was still uncertain. "I would say we are probably about 95 percent of where we ought to be in terms of Harbour Island, and within the next couple of months we will be at 100 percent," Basden said.
According to the general manager, some submarine cables to the area have already been laid to better service demand there, and BEC was focusing on strengthening the stand-by capability on Harbour Island itself, with three power-generating engines there. Two of the three are up and running, he said.
Harbour Island and North Eleuthera suffered heavy power outages and disruptions in service in recent years, news reports in January 2011 calling the outages there "massive". Basden was one of the participants in a panel discussion at the energy forum which was sponsored by the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC), Bahamas Hotel Association (BHA) and the Bahamas Home & Builders Show, in cooperation with Bahamas Ministry of the Environment, the United States Embassy, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Bahamas Contractor's Association.
Another participant on that panel, Minister of State for Environment Phenton Neymour, said Harbor Island was a prime example of a geographical area that was over-developed in a short period of time. Utilities such as electricity and water need to be factored into developments at the outset, he said. "Utilities as a whole were essentially left as an afterthought. We would approve developments, start construction and then afterwards begin to address utilities and other services.
"This, I think, is a major deficiency of the past [that] we must begin to change," Neymour said.
According to the Minister, this approach influenced the planning of the airport gateway project, which he said was an infrastructure improvement rather than road work project. All major utility companies factored into the planning, he said. Basden addressed several efforts being undertaken to transform BEC into a more efficient organization.
His comments followed a question from the floor that cited findings of German engineering and consulting firm Fichtner in an energy study of Bahamian government, hotel and residential energy consumption. It had been reported that overtime at the corporation in 2009 was the equivalent of every employee working an hour of overtime everyday by a local newspaper.
"At the end of the day one has to look at that in the proper context. The Bahamas, unlike many other territories, is an archipelago. So what that means is we have any number of islands to serve and there are built-in works we have to carry out conducive to overtime in terms of dealing with the archipelago, and even in New Providence there are a number of things we must address."
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