By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Regulators yesterday said they are seeking to gain “a deeper understanding” of what caused Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) holiday weekend woes that were not confined just to New Providence.

Juan McCartney, the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority’s (URCA) corporate and consumer relations manager, told Tribune Business that the supervisory authority will also seek to work with BPL to “mitigate” and prevent these incidents from re-occurring as Mangrove Cay and north Eleuthera also suffered frequent outages and load shedding.

“BPL is mandated to report all major outages to URCA, which would certainly qualify for what happened over the weekend,” he said. “In addition to that, Bahamians should expect stable, reliable power generation from all public electricity suppliers, and URCA is trying to gain a deeper understanding of what occurred over the weekend and how we cab work with BPL to mitigate it from happening any more.

“We’re working with them to stop this happening again and understand why it happened.” Mr McCartney added that URCA is taking a “holistic approach”, and working with BPL in a number of areas to help improve its operations across The Bahamas. “Certainly, what happened over the weekend we’re trying to gain an understanding of what happened and mitigate it from happening again,” he reiterated.

Tribune Business yesterday confirmed that power outages marred Mangrove Cay’s weekend homecoming festival with electricity supply said to have been disrupted ten times over a two-day period. This also knocked out the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s water supply, leaving residents and visitors hot, sweating and in the dark.

“We just had our homecoming this weekend,” one resident said in a voice note sent to this newspaper. “Overall, it was a rather successful event from my point of view. Everything went well apart from the fact we lost power for a rather extended time both night.

“For the first night our elected representative, Leon Lundy, was here so he got to experience that and then the following day, in the afternoon, Prime Minister Brave Davis came along with his entourage and also Leon Lundy, and they spoke and acknowledged the challenge that we have.... We had probably ten times the power went out the last two nights.

“It was obviously a lack of proper planning. We know we cannot keep the water on for an average population of 800 people here. Why did we think if we doubled the population for a couple of days we were not going to run out of water, which we did. It’s still down to a trickle.... What can you call it other than a collapse of our infrastructure?”

Cheryl Bastian, owner/operator of Andros-based Swain’s Cay Lodge, backed this account by telling Tribune Business: “The power was off for such long periods when we were having our annual homecoming and an opportunity for people to make some money. At one point it came on for one minute and then went off until 2pm. It was just in and out, in and out.

“It’s an annual event and income earner for our people who have all sorts of things planned and events all over the cay... It was just horrible. People left the island early. It was so disappointing. It’s getting worse. We’re going backwards. They want us to suffer.”

Ms Bastian said she had “a full house” at Swain’s Cay Lodge for the homecoming weekend, but in the absence of a generator “everybody just had to be in the dark... No light, no water and the temperature at the weekend was a record for May”.

The situation was not much better in north Eleuthera, which received a weekend visit from Jobeth Coleby-Davis, minister of energy and transport. One local resident, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the minster’s appearance as “totally a PR stunt”, while revealing that his electricity supply went out at 10pm on Monday night, was restored at midday only to go off one hour later, and then come back on in late afternoon.

“It’s absolutely disgusting,” they said of the island’s electricity woes. “The equipment is old, outdated, Eleuthera has grown by leaps and bounds and the infrastructure has not kept up. That’s the bottom line. It’s nothing new. It’s been going on for eight to ten months. You can’t blame the local BPL guys. They can only work with what they have.”

In the capital, BPL blamed its weekend load shedding, which some New Providence residents asserted lasted for up to five to ten hours, on record-breaking heat and temperatures coinciding with the loss of 50 Mega Watts (MW) of generation capacity. That is between one-sixth and one-seventh of the island’s total generation capacity.

Besides the failure of a 25 MW engine at its Clifton Pier power station, BPL also disclosed that the same amount of rental generation was unavailable due to what was described as “planned maintenance and other issues”. And, even when the 25 MW unit at Clifton Pier was returned to service on Sunday, May 19, at 6pm, BPL said customer demand still exceeded its projections by 20 MW.

As a result, with total New Providence electricity demand still exceeding BPL’s supply capacity, the state-owned utility was forced to reduce the burden via load shedding - and rotating which areas it temporarily cut-off - during peak hours. BPL, in a statement, said it was working with rental generation providers - such as FOCOL Holdings - to return 10 MW to the grid within 24 hours to reduce the shortfall.

It added that another 10 MW should be restored by this Friday, while BPL said it is working to return another three units that are offline for maintenance by end-May in a bid to meet peak summer demand. “These units will add 59 MW to the current capacity,” BPL said, not detailing whether these are its own generation assets or ones which it has rented.

BPL said it continued to work towards its “summer readiness plan” and anticipates 300 MW of available generation by June. “BPL continues to work towards its summer readiness plan, which includes restoring all rental generation capacity before the end of the month and completing repairs on three major units,” it added.

“By June, BPL anticipates 300 MW of available generation and is also working on other solutions to add additional megawatts to the grid, allowing the company to meet the projected summer peak with sufficient reserves to accommodate for increased demand or loss of generation.”

However, that 300 MW only slightly exceeds the 281 MW projected peak demand for New Providence this summer that was forecast recently by Ryan Pinder KC, the attorney general.