By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

An Opposition MP yesterday revealed his law firm suffered “a major handicap” when a Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) outage left Village Road residents and businesses without electricity for a day-and-a-half.

Adrian White, the St Anne’s MP, told Tribune Business his company was forced to close and endure “extreme disruption” in the absence of a generator after BPL seemingly suffered a series of equipment malfunctions that knocked out power supply to many in the eastern New Providence district.

He added that his constituents in the Breezy Hill area, with the eastern side of Village Road lying in St Anne’s, were forced to endure a hot Monday night without air conditioning in the absence of a generator with energy supply only restored at mid-morning yesterday.

A BPL spokesperson did not respond to Tribune Business inquiries before press time last night, but the Village Road woes occurred just as Bahamas Grid Company, the entity to which the Government has outsourced management and improvements to New Providence’s transmission and distribution grid, hailed the first three months’ progress under its $130m upgrade initiative.

Bahamas Grid Company, in which BPL holds a 40 percent equity ownership interest, asserted that its work has prevented 48,000 New Providence electricity customers from suffering more than 170,000 service interruptions caused by 182 “potential outages” that never happened.

The electricity grid operator, in a statement arguing that its work is already resulting in improved reliability for New Providence’s businesses and households, said: “Since breaking ground, Bahamas Grid Company crews have installed or replaced 80 overhead distribution poles, upgraded 56,000 feet of wire and load balanced more than 20 circuit miles of the primary voltage system.

“To support growing demand and improve grid resiliency, 3,800 feet of underground cable has been laid and 18 new service connections have been added. These early upgrades are directly benefiting approximately 6,000 customers and represent vital steps toward storm-hardening the island’s energy network.

“On the transmission side, the company has installed 105 new steel poles and pulled over 83,000 feet of high-capacity conductor. Bahamas Grid Company teams have also delivered more than 1,100 hours of emergency response support to help stabilise the grid and address urgent service needs.”

Bahamas Grid Company’s operating partner is Island Grid. That is an entity formed by Eric Pike, Bahamas Grid Company’s chairman, whose North Carolina-based electrical outfit, Pike Electrical, has been hired to effect the grid improvements that also involve the installation of 47 IntelliRupter fault interrupters throughout New Providence.

These devices detect and isolate faults in real time, thus reducing outage duration and scale. “Thanks to these installations, Bahamas Grid Company has prevented 182 potential outages this year, which would have caused over 170,000 service interruptions among the 48,000 customers living along the affected circuits,” the grid operator added.

“In terms of percentages, the IntelliRupters have led to a 73 percent reduction in total outages and an 86 percent reduction in potential power interruptions for customers in 2025.” Mr Pike added: “This is about building a stronger, smarter energy grid for The Bahamas. Every pole we set, and every line we upgrade, brings us closer to making reliable power the standard, not the exception.”

“We are implementing more than a standard grid upgrade; it’s a long-term investment in our communities,” said Mei Shibata, Bahamas Grid Company’s chief executive. “We’re proactively building a system that has the ability to self-mitigate issues, so that every household and business in New Providence can count on consistent, dependable power.”

However, Mr White yesterday questioned whether - given this week’s Village Road challenges - the woes BPL faces on Eleuthera and Harbour Island are now spreading to Nassau. “We may have to learn how to build boats again because the infrastructure seems to have limited resources to repair it,” he said. “We’ll be back over 100 years when our forefathers and mothers lived a sustainable life from the sea.

“Power was out all of yesterday [Monday]. We were closed; it was too hot to be inside. There was no computer or phone access. We were closed and had to wait until mid-morning today [Tuesday] to be back in office and address business from our clients. It was a major handicap. You are losing revenue.

“It was extremely disruptive. We had to attend matters with clients and couldn’t get in contact with them. We have quite a few hundred clients who may or may not be reaching out to us with new matters or other matters we have started,” Mr White continued.

“We had to determine whether or not to enter the office to work. As employers we cannot force persons to work in such conditions, and there is no point being in office when you don’t have access to computers or online files. It was impossible to be in office, and there is only a certain amount of errands you can do outside the office to take up one or two hours before you order staff to go home for the day.

Explaining that the presence of homeless persons, and his office’s location, had caused difficulties when it came to installing a back-up generator, the St Anne’s MP said the power challenges appeared to have been sparked by a fire at one of BPL’s transformers on the northern end of Village Road.

While this appeared to have been fixed at 3.30pm on Monday, with BPL crews leaving the areal, the state-owned utility’s network infrastructure then suffered a blown fuse or “issue underground” that knocked out energy supply until mid-morning Tuesday.

“Last night, a number of residents were affected on the eastern side of Village Road, which is the St Anne’s boundary,” Mr White told this newspaper. “I know down Breezy Hill they were without power during the night. They were without power all night.

“They were praying, hoping to have power by 6pm but they didn’t have power until 10am. They didn’t have power until around 10.20am. That’s an entire night and a number of people were without a generator, whose fridges are empty, homes almost too hot to bear.”

Brent Fox, Montague Motors’ principal, confirmed to Tribune Business that his auto dealership’s operations were also impacted by the BPL outages. “We tried to call them a couple of times, but we kept getting referred and put on hold,” he added of BPL.

“We were inconvenienced a bit. We were lucky we have a generator, but it cannot run the AC. We were kind of on a skeleton staff. It’s unusual to have us off for so long. I think it went off Monday morning around 9am or 10am, and it came back on briefly for 20 minutes in the afternoon around 2-3pm, but went back off and didn’t come back till mid-morning [Tuesday].”