By Fay Simmons

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

North Andros business owners are considering a $2.5m renewable energy plant to alleviate their electricity woes. This comes as URCA has announced an investigation of electronic communications outages in a number of islands.

The North Andros community has been battling with power outages since a fire at the BPL North Andros plant in July led to widespread damage of equipment and infrastructure.

Darin Bethel, the North Andros Chamber of Commerce president, said that local business owners are looking into pooling their resources to build a solar power plant that can supplement the community’s energy’s needs.

Mr Bethel said: “We are now looking at ways as a community to try and raise funds to build our own renewable energy plant.

“The community should be able to provide its own power supply and to be able to source that out.”

“Over the coming weeks we have an initiative to try and get people on board. Most of the business owners that I’ve spoken to are ready. The cost for the infrastructure and build will be about $2.5 million, we know that it’s going to be an uphill battle to get the finances, but we have to do it.”

Mr Bethel explained that the unreliable electricity service is ‘crippling’ the local economy as many local businesses struggle with loss of business and machinery, the added costs of fuelling generators and high electricity bills.

He added: “All of August we have had little to no service, but people who would ordinarily paying $200-$300 for light bill are seeing $1400 light bills. How in the world are these people going to pay these bills?

He said that the island is in a “crisis” and it is unacceptable that BPL is not compensating businesses for the losses they incurred due to the outages. He added that the lack of resolution to their electricity issues coupled slow response to a BPL diesel spill in North Andros has led many residents to feel as though the community is a “burden” for the firm.

He said: “This is a crisis, and we feel as though BPL is not doing sufficient. They feel as though we should just accept the fact that a fire burned down [the plant] and [accept]its loss. The community accept that but what we can’t accept is them not making any type of initiative to mitigate some of the loss that businesses faced during that period of time.

“And then you have the oil spill and not one official statement yet from BPL as to how they are going to mitigate the risk to residents of if they have looked into any contamination of the water.

“I know that they have a lot on their plate and they say they have enough equipment to generate electricity but the power is still going off all the time. It seems that BPL feels that North and Central Andros are a burden for them, they say that the revenues that are coming in from us isn’t sufficient for their costs of operation.”

He recalled that the during a meeting with BPL last month, it was revealed that utility company was operating at a loss in North Andros, with over $500,000 in accumulated arrears owed collectively by customers in the area.

He said: “They were saying that, on average, they make about $198,000 a month and these are active accounts. That is what their average bill is. And they say that they are in arrears by some $500,000 on those accounts. And so what they were saying is that they are operating at a loss in North Andros.”

He added that although BPL has discussed plans to bring renewable energy to North Andros, which he is confident will improve electricity service, a timeline for the initiative was not revealed.

He added: “They did mention that they are looking into putting a hybrid plant in the area of BAMSI that will cover north and central Andros, something like they are doing in Inagua. Once that comes along, I guess service will improve but we don’t know when that’s going to be.”

Yesterday, The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) released a statement indicating that it is currently conducting an investigation of numerous outages in electronic communications services throughout The Bahamas in recent months.

“In August alone, there were significant outages in Andros, the Berry Islands, Exuma, Inagua, Mayaguana and Ragged Island. To date, services have been restored on these islands, said URCA.

“Outages and disruptions such as these, and those documented in previous months, have led to increased public concern over the reliability and quality of electronic communications services in The Bahamas.”

The statement went on to explain that URCA has met with BTC executives to discuss the outages and ongoing mitigation plans.

“BTC has assured URCA that to date it has addressed the reported outages and the company is taking the appropriate measures to avert these issues going forward, it said.

“While URCA has met with the leadership team of BTC, URCA is conducting its own inquiry/investigation as to the underlying or root causes of the outages.”

Mr Bethel maintained that the frequent disruptions in internet services and water services on Andros is due in part to the frequent outages caused by BPL generation issues. He explained that the constant service interruptions strain back up generators and can damage machinery.

He said: “BPL plays a very important role in what’s happening with the other utilities, the water, BTC, ALIV, because they put strain on their operation as they too depend on BPL.

“Infrastructure for telecommunication services depends on BPL to be consistent when they are inconsistent you put a bigger strain on their back up power supply and they have service interruptions with the frequent disconnections. A lot of our utility issues are directly linked to the challenges.”