* Issues public apology for recent outages

* Blames situation on Dorian legacy issues

* Peel Street loss overloads West Sunrise

Grand Bahama Power Company (GBPC) yesterday admitted it has fallen below its “usual standard of service” as it issued a public apology to customers for recent unplanned electricity outages.

“Interruptions in electricity service are a significant inconvenience to our customers, and the frequency with which they have occurred in recent weeks is not in keeping with our usual standard of service,” said Nikita Mullings, the utility’s chief operating officer, in a statement.

“Our customers expect – and deserve – better from us, and we are working hard to resolve the issues that are at the root of recent outages.” GB Power blamed the outages on its power generation capacity being “well below the level normally available at this time of year”, and argued that the cause dated back to Hurricane Dorian’s devastating impact on its infrastructure.

“Back in September 2019, Hurricane Dorian caused catastrophic flood damage to GB Power’s Peel Street plant which, prior to the storm, provided more than 60 percent of the island’s electricity,” Ms Mullings said.

“Over the past 18 months, the utility’s West Sunrise Plant has carried the island’s load with help from supplemental temporary generation units. Because they are serving the whole of the island’s demand with no back-up from Peel Street, the six engines at the West Sunrise plant require a bit more maintenance and are thus more prone to faults.”

One Grand Bahama private sector source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said power outages and blackouts had been plaguing the island for “probably a month or a bit longer”. They added: “A little bit of rain, a little bit of wind, and they’ve been having island-wide blackouts.”

Grand Bahama residents and businesses are likely to question why GB Power and its 100 percent owner, Emera, the Canadian utility giant, have not resolved the generation capacity and related maintenance issues more than 18 months after Dorian struck. The business source said the release almost read like the utility conceding it had not been keeping up with West Sunrise’s maintenance.

GB Power yesterday said restoration of the Peel Street plant’s three generating units is progressing despite what it described as “the added challenges of COVID-19 restrictions”. It added that it is also sourcing additional temporary generation units to support Grand Bahama’s energy needs on a temporary basis, although it did detail the number or megawatt (MW) capacity that will be brought in.

“Until such time as we have additional temporary generation and the units at Peel Street are back in service, we will continue to be at risk of generation shortfalls resulting in potential service outages,” said Ms Mullings. “We will recover and, as we progress, we’ll keep our customers updated.”

Dave McGregor, GB Power’s chief executive, told Tribune Business in September 2019 that Peel Street’s 50 MW of generation capacity was likely to be lost for months after being flooded out by Hurricane Dorian’s storm surge.

He disclosed at the time that Grand Bahama’s monopoly energy supplier would rent eight MW of rental generation capacity from Aggreko, the same supplier used by Bahamas Power & Light (BPL), to eliminate the possibility of seeing the load shedding and outages that are now occurring.

Mr McGregor said then that the West Sunrise plant remained fully operational at 48 MW, with peak customer demand sitting at 30 MW in September 2019 just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic which dropped energy usage further.

He added that the utility wanted to have sufficient back-up for when individual engines were taken out of service for scheduled maintenance, but it appears that the additional rental capacity added then is now insufficient to handle the load as Grand Bahama’s economy ramps back up following the pandemic and Dorian.