NASSAU, BAHAMAS -A lightning strike at the Blue Hills Power Station resulted in thousands of residents and businesses across New Providence being left without electricity for hours on Sunday, with some communities remaining without power well into the night. The prolonged outage is the latest in a series of power disruptions affecting Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) customers this summer, prompting renewed criticism from Opposition Shadow Minister of Energy, Utilities and Aviation Dr. André Rollins, who said, “Instead of more spin, evasions, contradictions, deflections, and foolishness, the Davis administration needs to be open and honest about the generation, transmission, and other problems causing the blackouts.”
BPL said the outage was caused by a lightning strike at the Blue Hills Power Station. The utility said that once it was safe to access the facility, technicians carried out an initial assessment, which revealed a severe fault on the Earnest Street South Circuit at Substation B.
Electricity began returning to many customers around 7 p.m., nearly nine hours after the outage began shortly after 10 a.m., although some areas remained without service later into the evening.
The outage came less than a month after Energy Minister JoBeth Coleby-Davis said BPL had sufficient generation capacity to meet summer demand.
Dr Rollins questioned those assurances, stating, “A few weeks ago, following widespread outages in New Providence, Energy Minister JoBeth Coleby-Davis insisted that Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) had enough generation capacity to meet summer demand. So what happened? What is the state of the generation capacity today?”
He added, “Less than a month since the Minister’s statement, the country and New Providence are plagued with catastrophic and daily electricity blackouts, sometimes lasting hours upon hours. What is the Minister’s excuse this time?”
Dr Rollins said the repeated outages continue to affect healthcare, businesses and ordinary Bahamians.
“Power losses at Princess Margaret Hospital have resulted in the inability to provide dialysis to patients; businesses without generators cannot transact credit card payments; and Bahamians who cannot afford the expense of purchasing generators are suffering in the sweltering heat in their homes or going for a drive in their cars on roads where traffic lights are inoperable due to the ongoing power failure,” he said.
