By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) yesterday confirmed that all residential customers affected by Sunday morning’s fire at its Fresh Creek power station in Andros have been reconnected.

Marvin Green, BPL’s regional manager, said full supply was restored to residential consumers before noon on Monday. However, commercial or three-phase consumers are still relying on generators as technicians work to ensure safe reconnection.

“It’s a little different with the three-phase customers simply because now, where we originally supplied power from this power plant, there’s no guarantee that the phase rotation on the other plant will work for those customers,” said Mr Green.

“If that is reversed, it could cause some damage to their equipment, and so we will have to assess that with their local engineers to see that they are ready to receive the power from us. On the flip side of that, we have some more technicians on the way from New Providence to complete a lot of the cable works to allow us to bring these original generators on.

“Once these come on, then we can we know that we can bring those commercial customers back on, but we’ll be supporting them in the meantime.” Anthony Christie, BPL’s chief operating officer, added that an investigation into the cause of the fire is underway and the utility intends to file an insurance claim for the damages.

“We’ll have our security team, our audit team, in addition to our insurance team. They would send an adjuster who will do an assessment and an investigation to determine the root cause, so that we know who needs to be accountable for the damage or in order for us to put in a claim,” said Mr Christie.

“Those are the initial next steps, and those teams will be mobilising as we speak to arrive between today and tomorrow and, again, our safety team will also assess in order to make sure that we have enough safety and protection equipment in place for us to go back online with full supply from this power station.”

JoBeth Coleby-Davis, minister of energy and transport, said the Government had already secured additional generation capacity for Andros prior to the fire and reiterated plans to integrate renewable energy solutions into the Family Islands’ energy infrastructure.

“While the Government was planning for our new energy reform, where we’re having LNG added to our fuel mix on the Family Islands, not just New Providence, but we’re also coupling that with solar panel and battery storage. We had already planned to do some other forward moving at our BPL plant, and we had already secured some generation to come to the island within a matter of weeks,” said Mrs Coleby-Davis.

“However, with the fire we are sourcing rental units, which we have already sourced, and they will be here by this evening, weather permitting or in the morning, and that will assist us in continuing to provide the power, the demand that is from the island, but also to ensure we give that reliability that our consumers deserve and need.”

The fire broke out shortly after 6am on Sunday at BPL’s Fresh Creek power station. The blaze destroyed a trailer unit and one of the building sheds, but was quickly contained before it reached the main generation facility. Power supply to the surrounding area was impacted, prompting an urgent restoration effort by BPL.