NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) Communications Manager Arnette Ingraham confirmed to Eyewitness News early Friday morning that the power company has fully restored power to all BPL consumers in New Providence as of 4:00 a.m. following a massive power generation failure which reportedly affected 45 to 50 per cent of consumers.
Ingraham said BPL technicians worked through the night to ensure that customers were fully restored and asserted that “this is our first major outage that we are having in New Providence in almost a year, and we sincerely apologize to our customers who were impacted.”
BPL, in a press statement issued Friday morning explained, “BPL experienced a generator trip at the Clifton Pier Power Station around 9:00pm on Thursday night. BPL’s Station A, as well as all assets at the Blue Hills Power Station, remained online meaning that supply was lost to roughly half of customers in New Providence.”
“BPL’s teams were able to fully restore generation within a short period of time; however, there were challenges on the transmission network that prevented reconnection to the grid.”
The statement continued, “Later in the night, BPL’s teams isolated the fault on the transmission network and commenced the manual incremental reconnection of services. By 3:45am supply was fully restored on the island.”
As the widespread power outage blanketed New Providence Thursday night, many residents took to BPL’s Facebook page to voice their frustrations about the shortfall in power generation.
“The light keeps going on and off in Pinewood, y’all messing up the appliances man,” one resident complained.
Another resident posted, “There has to be some compensation for this the power has been cut 12 times.”
The massive power outage in New Providence came on the heels of rolling blackouts in Eleuthera; the Ministry of Energy announced earlier this week that residents in Eleuthera will receive a 50 per cent rebate on their July bills as a means to compensate for the lack of power generation on the island.
While Ingraham has asserted that power was been restored to all consumers in New Providence as of 4:00 a.m. Friday, Eyewitness News confirmed, shortly before 8:00 a.m. that a number of residents in eastern New Providence and pockets of communities in the southern district of the island remained without power supply.
