June 20, 2022
STATEMENT RE: JUNE 19 OUTAGE EVENTS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW PROVIDENCE – Bahamas Power and Light Company Ltd. (BPL) advises the general public that on Sunday, June 19th we experienced outages due to two separate incidents.
At 1:23 PM, several areas in Central New Providence went offline when a system disturbance occurred at our Clifton Pier Power Station. This problem was resolved in under an hour and the areas were fully restored.
On the heels of this event however, at about 5:30 PM, severe lightning conditions were experienced on the island of New Providence, impacting generation, transmission and distribution systems. As a result, a number of areas throughout the island, including Southwest and Eastern New Providence were impacted. These areas had transformers, and lines impacted as a result of direct lightning strikes. The public is reminded that BPL does not turn off areas in advance of most weather events, but protective devices such as fuses and circuit breakers operate to disconnect affected areas to ensure the safety of the general public and to reduce the risk of equipment damage. In all, 31 areas were affected by the inclement weather yesterday.
BPL is committed to ensuring the safety of our customers, employees and equipment. Thusly, once indication of safety was given after the weather conditions subsided, crews were dispatched to commence repairs and restore supply. Due to the significant amount of areas impacted by this event, it took our crews a number of hours to restore impacted areas and begin addressing individual customer concerns. The majority of customers impacted were restored by 9:00 PM. Our crews continued to work into the morning to restore the remaining customers. As at 11:00 AM today, our Control Center reported having 2 areas and 41 individual complaints outstanding.
BPL reminds customers that should they experience interruption to their power supply or any other electricity related emergencies, to CALL BPL at 225-5275.
