BPL Says It’s Ready for the Summer Months
|
Click to Listen Now
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The company says yesterday’s island-wide blackout was caused by electrical shortage
CEO of Bahamas Power and Light Whitney Heastie is reassuring the public that the corporation is capable of sustaining electricity over the summer months, following the island wide blackout on Tuesday.
A press statement from BPL said consumers should be “confident that the national utility is in a good position to take on the higher temperatures of the summer months.”
The company faults an electrical fault at a substation during an attempt to tie in a new substation at the corner of Gladstone Road and Firetrail Road, for the blackout.
Heastie said, “First, generation was not the cause of this event. This was not load shedding.”
Many people have questioned the corporation’s ability to handle the coming summer months after yesterday’s blackout, with many questioning the ability of the company to meet customer demands and minimize disruption.
The capability of the newly installed generators to replace antiquated generators, were also called into question.
But Heastie said he believes the improvements at BPL are paying off as the utility has integrated the new Station A into the generation mix.
“In addition to the Wӓrtsilӓ units at Station A, BPL has added the new aero-derivative TM2500 – designated GT1 – into the mix, and that unit is rated as high as 35 megawatts. BPL has also returned some of the units that had been under winter maintenance to service, bolstering our generation availability even more,” the statement said.
Heastie, “BPL continues its steady improvement. We started by firming up our generation fleet… As you get generation squared away, we start to expose the other areas where we still need to do some work.
“Our transmission and distribution system is vulnerable. Overhead lines, poles, transformers: during extreme conditions, they will get impacted. There are going to be parts of the island that are affected.”
He said his company is “working steadily to harden the T&D system.”
