By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) newly-appointed chairman yesterday said she is targeting “upwards of 95 to 98 percent” on network reliability and performance metrics.

Christina Alston said the state-owned utility provider is moving towards System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI), System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) and Customer Average Interruption Frequency Index (CAIFI) standards used in North America.

SAIDI measures the average amount of time it takes to restore non-momentary electric interruptions, while SAIFI measures the average number of non-momentary electric interruptions a customer experiences per year. The final indicator, CAIFI, measures the average number of interruptions per customer interrupted per year.

“We are looking to bring ourselves to North American standards in terms of SAIDI, SAIFI, CAIFI,” Ms Alston said. “Those are the metrics that the utilities in the US use, and that’s around duration and frequency of outages. And I would like to see us, outside of storms, because storms are a different thing - even in the United States they don’t include storms - but I would like to see us upwards of 95 to 98 percent.

“Where we are now is more complicated because each island is different.. but we are not going to run from the fact that our reliability has not been where it should be to serve the Bahamian people. We acknowledge that our GDP is tied to our energy, and that is the reason that the Ministry of Energy and Transport was formed in the first place, understanding that the goal is to lift up BPL in terms of energy and reliability and, by doing so, we can now move our economics to a different level.”

Ms Alston added that BPL is “leveraging” its partnerships to overcome supply chain obstacles. Speaking during a panel discussion at the Ministry of Energy and Transport’s energy forum, she said the utility is using its partnership with Bahamas Grid Company to obtain equipment and supplies quickly and avoid supply chain bottlenecks.

Bahamas Grid Company is the special purpose vehicle (SPV), whose ownership is split 60/40 between the private sector and the Government, to which New Providence’s energy grid and transmission and distribution network were transferred.

Ms Alston said BPL’s partnership with Bahamas Grid Company is “extremely important” and it is “as invested in our success as we are”. She added: “We’re a small country, and we know that there are supply chain issues in the energy sector, but being able to leverage these relationships, getting equipment here on time, these are things that we did not have before.

“But by leveraging our relationships we can now pick up the phone to any one of our partners and say: ‘I need a piece of switch gear, I need a transformer, I need this’. And because they are here, and they are partnering with us, and they are as invested in our success as we are, we are leveraging all of those relationships to get equipment here faster from a supply chain position in terms of purchasing power. So these relationships are extraordinarily important to us.”

Ms Alston said the partnership provided BPL with an “owner’s engineer” to protect the interest of the Bahamian public amid the ongoing reforms in the energy sector.

“Looking at these partnerships, one of the things that I think was very important for us was to bring on an owner’s engineer. And the concept of the owner’s engineer is really like your protectorate. So we, the Bahamian people, have an owner’s engineer who is actually looking out for our best interest,” she explained.

“By having an owner’s engineer, what we have done is we are protecting the interest of the Bahamian public with the size and scope and scale of these projects, and that’s very important. Those types of partnerships are very strategic.” Ms Alston acknowledged BPL’s reliability has “not been where it should be to serve the Bahamian people” but the utility is working to make improvements.