By Earyel Bowleg

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

RESIDENTS in Eleuthera, Cat Island and Long Island are to receive a 50 percent rebate on their next electricity bills after repeated issues with power outages.

Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) CEO Toni Seymour made the announcement yesterday during an Office of the Prime Minster press briefing addressing the outages on those islands as well as Abaco.

She said: “I would like to apologise once again to all of our Family Island customers who have been experiencing extended outages due to power disruptions, generation shortfalls or whatever the case may be, and to advise that we have we are offering a 50 percent rebate on the base rate for the next billing cycle to the residents of Eleuthera, Long Island and Cat Island,” she said.

Eleuthera has been marred with outages for months and locals protested over the issue.

Pedro Marcello, BPL’s Family Islands regional manager, said Hatchet Bay plant experienced a blackout on August 4 due to an issue with one of the main generators. An eventual overload of the system occurred and all generators, including the rentals, tripped offline.

The technicians identified the problem and the unit was replaced.

Three out of four Hatchet Bay units are operational and require radiator replacements. The company contracted for these repairs have already received 50 percent of their payment and expected to commence this project within the next four weeks.

Mr Marcello said the government has signed a PPA with companies to provide 19.91MW of LNG generation, 8.7MW of solar and 10MW of battery storage.

Mainland Eleuthera has 34MW of generation capacity from two power stations — Hatchet Bay and Rock Sound — with an additional 3.6MW to be added soon, raising total capacity to 37.6MW.

Harbour Island operation has 11 MW of total generation, 6 MW from rentals and 5 MW from BPL, supplying about 39 consumers. Peak demand ranges from 4 to 6.5 MW, with the highest recorded in July 2023.

Mr Marcello said this is more than enough generation for Harbour Island.

Cat Island Power Station originally had four engines. After two failures, one about a week apart, only two units remain operational. Repairs are ongoing on one failed unit, while a new unit is being installed to boost power. The installation is expected to be completed by the middle of next week.

Long Island’s network has a central plant with north and south feeders, allowing balanced load shedding. However, because the power plant is farther north, the southern areas sometimes face longer outages. To address this, a temporary generator is planned for the southern area which will connect to the grid. 

Abaco’s power system relies on the Wilson City station for south-central areas and the keys, and a rental-based Cooperstown station for the north.

Currently, two Wilson City units are operational while two others are under maintenance.

“While the two units at the Wilson City power station is sufficient generation to meet the demand on the island of Abaco, if one of those units goes down for any reason, we are in a state of load shedding, and that is what we experienced over the past few days, where we lost one of the units,” Ms Seymour said.

“So we put in place a load shedding schedule for the mainland for Abaco. Now what we’re doing to correct that, in addition to our technicians on the ground working on the two units that are currently unavailable, we are installing generation on all of the main Abaco Cays.”

A generator was installed in Great Man-of-War Cay and expected to be in service by early next week. Two additional units in Hope Town will be installed.

The BPL is also installing a unit on Great Guana Cay to bring some relief at the Wilson City station. This will allow the Cays to remain self-sustaining in case of engine failure or submarine cable damage.