BPL admits its Briland power woe ‘untenable’

By NEIL HARTNELL 

Tribune Business Editor 

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

HARBOUR Island’s latest electricity woes are “cruel” to residents and “insulting” to wealthy investors who have sunk millions of dollars into acquiring high-end homes in a destination with inadequate infrastructure.

James Malcolm, a former Ministry of Tourism executive who is a realtor, and now runs a vacation rental/property management business on Briland, told Tribune Business it was “ludicrous” that one “of the most coveted tourism destinations” in The Bahamas faces at least a four-hour load shedding rotation until this coming weekend.

Speaking out after Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) itself admitted that Briland likely faces “an untenable situation” for the whole week, he confirmed that diesel supplies on the island were exhausted by Friday to raise the prospect that many homes and businesses might run out of fuel for their generators before an anticipated fresh shipment arrived yesterday.

Mr Malcolm, estimating that Harbour Island real estate activity has generated around $40m in combined VAT and real property tax revenues post-COVID for the Public Treasury, told this newspaper that home purchasers are getting little to no return on this investment as few if any of these tax dollars are being reinvested in the community, its utilities and infrastructure.

Affirming that he was “sweating it out like everyone else”, Mr Malcolm said of BPL’s latest Briland woe: “It’s ludicrous. Two hotels are closed, the Dunmore and Coral Sands. The marinas are fairly empty. There’s not a lot of activity. It’s almost like the off-season and they cannot power the island. We’re coming into August, there’s not a lot of tourism. The island is in very low occupancy, and they still have to shed power.

“I calculated that in the last four years of real estate activity here, of which I’ve been part, just from the 10 percent VAT on the conveyance of property and real property tax, which has gone up significantly after they took the cap off and did the reassessments, conservatively $40m has gone into the Public Treasury from these two things alone.”

Mr Malcolm said he cares for one homeowner’s property where more than $100,000 in real property tax is paid annually. “What are they getting in return?” he asked. “It’s embarrassing that you’re asking the foreign second homeowners to pay exorbitant real property taxes and there’s no power on the island. Come on. After they paid a huge transfer tax to buy the property?

“Where’s our infrastructure.... our water, our power? I’m getting fed up with it. It’s embarrassing to look at second homeowners being asked to pay $100,000 in real property tax and I’ve got to tell them the generator is without diesel because the power has been on and off, on and off. There was no diesel as of Friday.

“It’s inexcusable in this day and age for the amount of revenue this island puts into the Public Treasury. Where is the return on investment? Give us a proper power plant please. You’re making residents pay property tax but the money is not going to improve our infrastructure. There is nothing in exchange. The money is not coming back to the island.”

Mr Malcolm said it was “insulting” to second homeowners that they have received no return on their tax payments, while describing the power outages as “quasi-cruel” for Briland residents and those who work on the island.

“It’s impacting one of the most popular and coveted destinations in The Bahamas,” he added. “This is a destination where wealthy people from all over the world pay millions of dollars to buy property here and there’s no power, there’s no water.”

BPL, in a statement to Harbour Island residents and customers, apologised for both the load shedding and lack of transparency and information provided to customers. It blamed the problems on Briland’s increased energy demand which coupled with the absence of spare generation capacity due to “sudden failures”, has left it unable to meet the destination’s electricity load.

“BPL presently has six one mega watt (MW) rental generation units installed on Harbour Island. This is an increase from 5 MW, and was necessary to provide redundancy if any of these units failed or maintenance was necessary,” the state-owned energy supplier said.

“Harbour Island’s load demand now well exceeds 5 MW, which means that all the units must be online continuously. This has created various challenges in recent months as maintenance and sudden failures have resulted in lost generation and subsequent outages.

“BPL works closely with its rental generation partner to complete maintenance or carry out repairs expeditiously as we realise that having all units fully operable is essential. From time to time, these repairs require parts that need to be shipped or flown in from other countries, and that extends the time that a unit is unavailable,” BPL added.

“This is precisely where we find ourselves now as one of the units is down for repairs and we are awaiting the shipment of necessary parts. In the interim we are load managing. This means customers may experience daily power outages in three to four-hour intervals, especially during peak periods.

“This time may be extended during days when the island sees increased visitor arrivals, particularly the current Emancipation Day weekend.” BPL then admitted that the necessary repairs may only be completed by this Saturday, August 10, leaving Harbour Island with several more days of intermittent power cuts.

“We realise that this is an untenable situation for residents and businesses on the island, and we are working with our rental partner to procure the necessary parts as soon as possible. Their estimated timeline to have the parts on island and complete repairs is the end of this week, August 10, 2024,” BPL said.

“While every measure is being undertaken to expedite this process, we will improve our communication with residents. A load management schedule will be shared with the community daily. We do want to advise that based on system demands at any given time, the schedule may be adjusted in duration and areas impacted.

“Simultaneous with the repairs to the rental unit, we are also working to install 5 MW of BPL-owned generation on Harbour Island in the next six to eight weeks. While it will not fully meet the island’s load demands, we are confident that BPL-owned generation serving as a back-up to the reestablishment of the subsea cable providing power from the Hatchet Bay power station will provide long-term stability.”

Going into apology mode, BPL added: “BPL... sincerely apologises for the lack of transparency regarding this present challenge on Harbour Island. BPL sincerely apologises to its customers in Harbour Island who have been experiencing intermittent outages since July 30, 2024, and gives our assurance that we are working to stabilise your supply on the island.

“More importantly, we sincerely apologise that customers were not advised of the current generation challenges and its impact on the Harbour Island community.”

Comments

ExposedU2C says...

Government has very deliberately stood by for well over a year and done nothing about BPL's problems. Management of BPL should have long ago been contracted out (not sold) to a professional group not in any way affiliated with the government. Criteria and specifications for the appropriate management contract should have been open to public input and debate. The contract should have been given to the most ideally suited independent professional group based on established criteria and a transparent bidding process.

Instead, this corrupt Davis led PLP government has allowed BPL's problems to worsen while pressing all and sundry, including URCA, to cry out about them in order to set the stage for the engineering of the greatest heist ever of national assets by the insatiably greedy Snake and his crooked side-kick Anthony Ferguson.

Bahamians and their businesses can kiss any hope for affordable electricity good-bye if this corrupt Davis led PLP government is allowed to simply hand over a controlling ownership interest of our nation's vital energy sector to the investor cabal led by Snake and Ferguson for pennies on the dollar of true value.

Posted 6 August 2024, 10:04 a.m. Suggest removal

ExposedU2C says...

A cash strapped corrupt government creates the ideal environment for exceptionally sinister and greedy vultures, both local and foreign, to be 'invited' to swoop down on us and acquire our most valuable national assets and vital state-owned monopolies for mere pennies on the dollar of their true value. Our most valuable land areas and government monopolies are literally being given away by corrupt politicians to equally corrupt cabals without any kind of meaningful public input and with no transparent bidding process to try discover the best buyer at the best price for the Bahamian people.

Our government now desperately needs get its financial house in order. To do so, taxes and fees currently being levied on the cruise ship owners and operators, the port operators and the 'illegal' gaming web shop owners and operators, all need to be at least quadrupled (x 4) as soon as possible in order to be much fairer to our nation and to help ease the government's cash crunch. Any legislation necessary to accomplish this should be immediately readied for passage by parliament.

At the same time, PM Davis as minister of finance should be immediately directing budget amendments by way of ministerial orders that slash wherever reasonably possible the current amounts budgeted for each government agency, department and state-owned entity by at least 10% with a freeze on all new public sector hires, enforcement of mandatory retirements upon reaching the set age, and a hard freeze in the compensation packages of all personnel in the public sector, including all elected officials.

Without these types of harsh austerity measures we need only look at the failed state of Haiti to our south to see our future.

Posted 6 August 2024, 11:22 a.m. Suggest removal

JackArawak says...

Elbow Cay (and central Abaco in general) make significant financial contributions to the government annually and are also neglected. However, The Tribune doesn’t seem to want to report this.

Posted 6 August 2024, 11:45 a.m. Suggest removal

ThisIsOurs says...

How much development is going on on harbour island that is foreign owned air bnb rentals? Is the island being over developed? Are the locals being locked out of the power grid as when they are ready to build their homes resources are all taken up by money rich foreign owners who dont even live on the island.

When these new developments are being proposed the planning **has** to extend to the power grid. Our power issues in NP are likely due to the new hotels and explosion of luxury second home communities... on top of age old corruption

Posted 6 August 2024, 11:45 a.m. Suggest removal

JohnQ says...

Exactly. What we are witnessing and living through, is a classic example of poor leadership. The power grid supply and demand requirements did not suddenly appear/change overnight. Lack of communication and planning stem from an energy supplier that is inept, corrupt, and backwards. The BPL leadership has to go. Privatize the utility and move forward.

Posted 7 August 2024, 7:07 a.m. Suggest removal

ExposedU2C says...

Be careful what you pray for here. This corrupt Davis led PLP government's sponsored heist via a PPP of a controlling ownership interest in our nation's vital electrical power distribution grid by a ruthless investor cartel led by the unscrupulous and insatiably greedy likes of Snake and Anthony Ferguson does not come anywhere close to a privatization in the interest of the Bahamian people.

You only have to look at Venezuela and the initial corrupt, hurried and very non-transparent privatization of its vital national energy monopolies a few decades ago to understand what will come our way sooner than we care to think. There are much better ways of moving forward in dealing with BPL's problems as opposed to simply giving away a controlling ownership interest in our nation's energy sector to the wrong type of investor group.

Pintard and the other senior FNM politicians have yet to make it clear to all concerned that if the FNM is elected the next government, they stand ready to completely unravel these corrupt back-room BPL related PPP deals financially engineered by the crooked likes of Snake and Anthony Ferguson.

Posted 7 August 2024, 12:11 p.m. Suggest removal

JohnQ says...

Sorry EU2C. Government isn't the continued solution.

Posted 7 August 2024, 9:33 p.m. Suggest removal

ExposedU2C says...

Nor is the stealing of vital national assets from the Bahamian people by a corrupt cabal of marauders led by Snake and Ferguson.

Posted 7 August 2024, 11:10 p.m. Suggest removal

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