By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

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.”

Discussing BPL’s effort to restore electricity on Abaco following Hurricane Dorian, Mr Bannister said every single community on mainland Abaco “either has power or has access to power.”

He said: Our work on the island continues to advance. To begin with, we concentrated on restoring the distribution system first, which is effectively mostly rebuilt, allowing the reconnection of all customers on the mainland who are ready to be reconnected. We are now in the process of rebuilding the transmission network on the island, building in increased resiliency and efficiency with the use of new ductile metal poles and other technological advances, adding in redundant lines and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) remote control.”

Mr Bannister said after BPL introduced its payment plan options in November 2020, the number of payment plans that have opened have increased. These include 58 by November 20; 383 in December; 380 in January and 468 in February for a total of 1,289.

“To ensure there was consistent cash flow as a result of the payment arrangements, BPL changed its disconnection strategy to disconnection for non-payment of total delinquent balances over 30 days and over $500, which commenced on January 4, 2021.” he said.