A press conference held at The Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) yesterday, revealed that officials were engaged in load shedding – a process that would have shut out power to Nassau residents on a rotational basis in order to keep the system running. But according to BEC Deputy General Manager of Engineering and Operations, Anthony Forbes, “unforeseen faults” added to the programme that resulted in the massive and long-lasting blackouts.
“The outages were a result of load shedding,” Mr Forbes said. “And as a result of a shortage at the generating plant, you would want to retain supply to as much customers as possible. So what you would do, is take out areas on a rotational basis, [in order] to be able to retain supply to the rest of the island. The outages were on a rotational basis and they were planned, but the occurrence was not unplanned.”
While Mr Forbes admitted that BEC was engaged in load shedding, he could not explain why Nassau residents were not informed of the possible effects of the load shedding.
However, BEC General Manager Kevin Basden tried to explain what really happened.
“In essence, what happened was that all customers would have been on supply,” Mr Basden said. “A fault would have developed and in that instance, there would have been an outage. So there would not have been any prior notification that the fault would have developed. That would have happened instantly.
“But I think statements were issued. The corporation issued a number of statements advising the public of the challenges and what could have been expected.”
Mr Basden explained that the planned maintenance programme coupled with faults from a few of the generators, caused the sporadic outages over the weekend.
For the past two weeks, Nassau residents were plunged into darkness after random power outages spread across the island. Initially, BEC officials blamed the blackouts on faulty generators, rather than admitting to a load shedding programme that failed due to poorly running generators.
This admission came after members of The Bahamas Electrical Workers Union (BEWU) released a press statement claiming that BEC management was attempting to mislead public on the recent blackouts.
The statement read: “Their statement about an ‘ongoing investigation concerning these outages’ needs to be clarified.” The union called the Corporation’s attempt to “cast implications… outrightly devious.”
The union questioned whether poor decisions were being made at BEC, as well as how could there be lack of capacity, with the recent addition of the 45mw to generating capacity.
“We, The Bahamas Electrical Workers Union, are asking the public to join with us in asking BEC to truthfully state the cause of these outages. Do not be fooled by their attempts to cast blame on anyone but themselves. The management and their decisions are the only ones responsible for the current load shedding,” the union’s statement stated.
But yesterday’s emergency press conference cleared up the matter.
By: JIMENITA SWAIN and IANTHIA SMITH, The Nassau Guardian
