BY ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net 

AN ABACO councillor is calling for more transparency from BPL amid increased power woes.

Roscoe Thompson, councillor of the central Abaco district and chairman of the Marsh Harbour/Spring City Township, confirmed Abaco has experienced “a lot of power issues in the last couple of weeks”. He said Abaconians look to them for answers and they reach out to BPL. However, “they won't let nobody in there to find out exactly what's going on.”

“They won't let local government, they won't let nobody in there to find out exactly what's going on,” Mr Thompson said. “And that question, I think it was brought up on Guardian Radio. What is going on with our power situation? How come everything is very quiet, and they won't let the people know what is, what is happening. What is our issue? Is it transmission? Is it generation.  What is going on here?

“I think local government needs it because that's who the people come to, you know, then, then we have to go to people at BPL to get the information. So I think that your outlet of informing people is through the news media, but also local government. But the government has to be straight up with the Bahamian people here in Abaco. Exactly what is going on with BPL right now, here in Abaco? How many generators are actually functionable out there at Wilson City [Power Station]. We had four 12MW generators put in. How many of them are actually running?

“And we need to know what is going on with our power station here in Wilson City. How many generators are actually running? I mean, because if you only have two generators running, don't you think you should be looking for alternative means to have a standby generator in place and online, in case the power does go out, that you have a backup. What if we lose another generator, and you only have 12MW? There's going to be a ton of load shedding going on over here, and then that's going to affect the tourist. It's going to be a trickle downeffect. It affects marinas. It affects second homeowners. It affects rentals. It affects Airbnbs.”

He noted that the outages impact everyone including tourists. He does not believe BPL is ready to take on the summer loads.

“Today [yesterday] the power went off,” Mr Thompson said. “I know that people were complaining about the other day the power was off. So it's been more frequent because remember, this is our peak season. The draw over here, I would say island wide, is probably between 20 and 23MW of power that people are drawing and that means that's what we're using. We only have 24MW at the power station. So if you get a little peak and it goes over 24MW, it ends up tripping the system.

“Summer is here, and we are continuing to have power outages with sunshine. I can understand when you have a thunderstorm, or something like that. But today, the power went out and it was clear as day.

“It affects everybody, second homeowners, people that don't have generators. Most of the homes, I would say, in the rental market and a lot of the resorts rely on generators for backup power. But the problem is, is when you end up having to run your generator for 12 or 24 hours. They're not made for constant running. They're made for backup, to keep power on for a certain amount of time. [I'm] not saying that you can't run it for two or three days, but you puta lot more strain on your generator. 

“Here in Abaco, I would say, yes, it does affect [everyone] because not every house that is rented out, or every Airbnb has a standby generator. So would it affect tourism? Would it affect tourists that are here and people that are visiting? Yes, it would. People don't want to be without power, even though it might only be for a couple hours. We understand, there are sometimes outages that are beyond anybody's circumstances. But something needs to be done and the reason why? Why is our power going out so frequently? It's hard for me to believe that it's a transmission of lines, because majority after Dorian or brand new lines. It's not like they're 20 years old, like some places in Nassau.”

Mr Thompson said BPL should look into reimbursing the public for damages and due to the fact that power constantly goes out.

“When BPL goes out, or they have a brown out, or a surge, or whatever it may be, if you do not go through the process and call the power station and let them know that you had a brown out…” Mr Thompson said. “People lose their ACs, they lose their TVs, they lose their microwaves. They make it very difficult to get a rebate or a refund on burnt up equipment that is the power company's fault. The red tape that is there is kind of outdated, if you ask me, because if the power goes off, I have to call BPL power station and say, hey, my power's off, and then when it comes back on, I got to call him and let them know my microwave broke up. And then I got to go get an application and fill it out,  but you have to report that you had a power outage. The only reason I can say that is because I know when we lost our microwave here in Abaco, and we're talking eight years ago, I've yet to be reimbursed by BPL, and we did it the right way.

“Should they at the end of the month, give a credit? Maybe that's something that they need to look at if our power is going off every other day. At the end of the day, BPL should do something to reimburse the public. Whatever that may be. Is that a credit on your account, or something like that. But they get away with murder over here and throughout The Bahamas.”