With restaurants at their busiest and beauty salons filled with students wanting to beat the back to school rush, an island-wide black out hit New Providence, shortly before 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, affecting some 65,000 Bahamas Electricity Corporation consumers.
General manager of BEC, Bradley S. Roberts, told The Guardian that a sub-contractor working at the Clifton Pier power station damaged a cable that supplied power to one of its main transformers, causing the entire system to crash.
"Because the fault was so close to the generators, the generators tripped off-load. And because the fault was so extensive and all the generators at Clifton tripped off, the generators at Baillou Hills also tripped off, as they were not able to pick up the load that was required so very quickly," Mr. Roberts said during a telephone interview.
"There was not enough generation at Baillou Hills to do it anyway, so the cascade tripping of generators was a result of the fault initiated by someone working for one of the contractors."
Mr. Roberts said power was restored to various sections of New Providence yesterday, as soon as the generators that were being used before the blackout at the Clifton Pier site were restored.
"What they have to do is check to make sure that they locate the fault, isolate the fault and start to progressively put generators on load at Baillou Hills and then at Clifton Pier. They are in the process of doing that now," he said, adding that a total of seven generators are commissioned at BEC's Clifton Pier site, but all may not have been in operation during the time of the blackout.
A total of 10 generators are housed at BEC's Baillou Hills power site. However, Mr. Roberts was not able to determine how many units were in operation when the island-wide blackout occurred.
"I can't really give any details now because I have not received a detailed report. I am just giving you this information based on a preliminary report," Mr. Roberts said, adding that as soon as the black out struck, BEC moved swiftly to have power restored to all areas.
"Power is being restored to some people already, but it will take a little while longer to restore it to other people. Without being directly on the scene, I can't say how long it will take to restore power fully to all the customers, but I don't think it would be very long," he said.
According to Mr. Roberts, the amount of time it takes to restore areas in New Providence is decided by those operating the control room, and it all depends on which machine is switched on first by its control room operators.
"When you have a problem like this, the people in the power plants have to check all of the auxiliary equipment to make sure that everything is in good working order. Some machines may be able to start up right away and with other machines, we would have to do some things before we can put them on," Mr. Roberts said.
"When they are in the process of doing these things, it is best to leave them alone to get the restoration done and get the report afterwards. So we don't disturb them very much when they are restoring power."
The BEC chief said it is only when power is mostly restored and an assessment of all plants are carried out, that BEC would be able to precisely say when power would be restored to the entire island.
"But I don't think it will be very long before we have all the customers back on," he said.
Meanwhile, the island wide power outage affected various businesses who were forced to either close their doors for several hours or completely because they were unable to operate efficiently.
McDonalds on Thompson Boulevard was closed for some two hours, forcing customers to go elsewhere. A major traffic congestion was also created on the streets of New Providence, as all traffic lights were out of service and many drivers failed to give way to other motorists.
There was also a break in transmission on the national radio stations, (ZNS), that affected its AM 1540, 1240AM and Power 104.5FM stations.
By Tamara McKenzie, The Nassau Guardian
