By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Grand Bahama Power Company “seems pretty confident they are going to be able to hold the fort” with no further major outages for summer 2025, private sector representatives have disclosed.

Dillon Knowles, the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce president, told Tribune Business that the plans unveiled by the island’s monopoly energy provider last week “seem to be sound” but it now has to execute - especially on generation unit maintenance - to restore both business community and household confidence in the reliability of its supply.

He added that GB Power has a 22 mega watt (MW) generation capacity surplus, with 74 MW if all units are available to handle the island’s 55 MW peak load demand, but this depends on all necessary and scheduled maintenance being completed. The utility informed Chamber representatives that it intends to finish this by month’s end.

Dave McGregor, GB Power’s president and the senior Caribbean executive for its 100 percent owner, Canadian energy giant Emera, could not be reached for comment before press time. However, Mr Knowles confirmed that the outages and load shedding that occurred around Independence Day resulted from a lightning strike knocking out the key generating unit then in operation.

With other turbines offline for maintenance, this led to a generation capacity shortfall where electricity supply could not match demand. GB Power is now seeking to complete maintenance by July’s end. “I had an interesting meeting with them [GB Power],” Mr Knowles disclosed of last Thursday’s encounter. “They gave some background on the situation, but it appears they have it back to normal.

“They are working on more reliability, but are managing to keep the power on. They have maintenance work going on, but nothing to stop them from supplying. They seem to be pretty confident that they are going to be able to hold the fort. They had some units offline for service when the unit that was hit by lightning, or affected by lightning, went down.

“So they are continuing to work that cycle to get them back up and running and into service. Their plan seems to be sound. Obviously, they still have to execute it, but assuming they are able to execute what they plan to do they should be in OK shape,” the GB Chamber president added.

“They have 74 MW of capacity, and peak load is usually around 55 MW. They have the capacity to handle the load. The question is can they get reliability up by completing maintenance activities? They’re looking at the end of the month.”

Asked how GB Power can now restore the confidence of its customers, Mr Knowles added: “I don’t know how they do that other than through demonstrating. I don’t know that any of these conversations are going to restore that confidence easily. I think time will tell you how they respond with what they’re doing.”

GB Power, on Friday, July 11, gave “two days” as its restoration timeline while warning that residential and business customers may still “experience temporary outages... as a result of the current shortfall”.

It had previously blamed its woes on a surge caused by a lightning strike that impacted the Peel Street plant on July 9, which resulted in “the loss of one of our primary generating units”. The utility added that Unit 33 had to be taken offline the following day due to what it described as “the absence of critical auxiliary support” from unit 31.

“This has resulted in a generation shortfall, directly affecting our ability to supply power reliably to all customers,” GB Power added. It said a generation specialist had already arrived on Grand Bahama, with a turbocharger specialist also set to arrive shortly. Both are to stay for summer to support repairs and “help strengthen systems against risk”.

“Our teams are working around the clock to troubleshoot and repair the affected units, with a restoration timeline estimated within the coming days.... As a result of the current shortfall, customers may continue to experience temporary outages until the affected units are fully restored,” GB Power said.

The latest generation shortfall, and inability to keep Grand Bahama fully supplied with electricity, comes at an especially sensitive time for the Power Company and the island’s wider energy regulatory regime.

Mr McGregor, speaking to this newspaper in November 2024 following a series of power outages and load shedding that disrupted last summer, asserted then that the company had “shored up reliability with temporary generation” and had “a very robust maintenance plan going forward” to prevent any repeat. However, just such an event has now occurred.

GB Power is still seeking approval of its proposed 6.3 percent base rate increase, for which it had sought regulatory approval last year and had hoped would take effect from New Year’s Day 2025.

And, adding further pressure to the generation woes is the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority’s (URCA) Supreme Court challenge to determine whether itself or the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) is the true regulator for GB Power and, by extension, the wider energy industry in Freeport.