The Tribune

By Neil Hartnell

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Marsh Harbour’s volunteer fire department was last night on the verge of rescuing Abaco from “a pretty dark Christmas” after it provided Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) with emergency equipment to restart the island’s generation plant following the “worst outages since Hurricane Dorian”.

Roscoe Thompson, head of the Marsh Harbour/Spring City Township, told Tribune Business that the department “dropped off” the compressor normally used to help fill its oxygen tanks and breathing apparatus to BPL’s Wilson City power plant after critical equipment failures forced it to shut down completely.

Abaco residents and businesses were on Tuesday forced to endure load shedding that left them without energy supply for up to 17 hours or almost an entire day, with commerce brought to a standstill for companies without generators. Food stores and restaurants without back-up power supply lost thousands of dollars worth of unrefrigerated product to spoilage, with the lengthy outages also impacting vacation rentals in the Christmas run-up.

BPL, in a statement last night, voiced optimism that the volunteer fire department’s compressor can provide sufficient air flow to the Wilson City plant’s generators such that they can be restarted and ease an energy crisis that has forced Abaco to - for the moment - rely on one Cooper’s Town-based unit to meet its power needs.

Asserting that it had made “significant progress in restoration efforts”, thanks to Marsh Harbour’s volunteer fire department, BPL said the compressor - which it described as being “on loan” - had been installed and was undergoing testing as of late afternoon yesterday.

It added that the compressor’s performance was being closely monitored as BPL technicians completed system checks to confirm it can provide the airflow required to restart power generation at the plant.

Anthony Christie, BPL’s chief operating officer, said: “Now that installation is complete, our teams are actively testing the system and preparing for start-up procedures. If all checks are successful, we anticipate the gradual restoration of power to begin before nightfall today [yesterday].”

BPL confirmed that the Wilson City power plant shut-down was caused by the failure of both its main electrical compressor and its back-up diesel version. It said these units are essential for supplying air flow into the power station and, without them, the power generation engines cannot operate.

“In the interim, BPL has implemented a rotational power schedule to ensure that power supply is equally distributed between consumers in the north, central and south Abaco. This rotational power scheduling will continue until power has been successfully restored,” the state-owned utility monopoly added. It also apologised to Abaco businesses and residents for the outages.

Mr Thompson, confirming the volunteer fire department’s role, told Tribune Business that Abaco has been suffering from increasingly lengthy power outages since December 1. He added that the compressor situation raises further questions about BPL’s “redundancy” back-up plans, or lack of them, and whether it needs to keep a more extensive inventory of replacement parts notwithstanding its cash-strapped financial situation.

“Since December 1, it’s been pretty bad,” Mr Thompson confirmed of BPL’s service. “For the last day, Marsh Harbour has been off for at least eight hours. In some parts they’ve been off for ten hours and, in others, en to 12 hours. They have us load shedding right now. I think the issue is not generation but the compressors. They are needed to start the generators. It will be a God send if they can at least get a generator online.

“At Marsh Harbour fire rescue, we have a compressor that fills the breathing apparatus tanks. We just dropped it off to Wilson City, and are hoping that works to allow them to start their generators. All engines are offline at Wilson City power station for the moment. They have a generation unit in Cooper’s Town that they are using to run the whole island from north to south. I don’t know of the cays have their own.”

Prior to the fire department’s intervention, BPL had been working feverishly to source the necessary compressor from other islands, including New Providence and Grand Bahama. The replacement compressor, originally expected on December 8, had been delayed until January 10, 2026, leaving Abaco facing a bleak Christmas and New Year, and peak winter tourism season, until the local solution arrived.

Marvin Green, BPL’s northern Family Island regional manager, said the utility’s engineering teams tried adapting parts from identical compressors and even enlisted a local machine shop, but the attempts were unsuccessful. They located a portable compressor, but it could only reach 12 bars — below the 15 to 25 required by BPL’s generation engines.

“It’s been pretty bad; it’s been worse than the summer,” Mr Thompson added of Abaco’s December outages. “At least during the summer it was only off for one to two hours. Since December 1 it’s been four to six hours a day. It’s affected business because some shopping centres and companies don’t have back-up generators. It has affected commerce because people have not been able to open and operate without power.

“It’s been affecting the Airbnbs, some of the tourism sites. It’s been affecting the community as a whole. Yesterday was the worst. I think that it’s the worst that I’ve seen in a long time over here. The question to ask BPL is why they don’t have a redundancy plan in place with back-up compressors for situations like this. They should have spare parts for everything. I’d rather this was in the summer than right now.”

Another Abaco source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were still operating on generator when Tribune Business called yesterday and had been without BPL supply for 17 hours on Tuesday in common with the rest of the island. “The power plant is completely down, and the whole island is being powered by Cooper’s Town,” they added.

“It’s a power nightmare. The worst since Dorian I would say.” However, the source said that devastation inflicted by the Category Five hurricane meant that Abaco has the most back-up generators of any island in The Bahamas, thus minimising the impact.

“I would say that, out of all the islands in the country, Abaco has probably got more generators per capita,” they added. “The businesses have generators, most homes who can afford it have generators. We definitely have more generators than any other island. We went through a whole year without power after Dorian.”

Daphne DeGregory-Miaoulis, the former Abaco Chamber of Commerce president, yesterday echoed calls by John Pinder, the central and south Abaco MP, for BPL to provide business and residential customers with “credits” in their upcoming light bills as compensation for both the outages and extra costs they have incurred in diesel fuel to run their generators.

“It seems there is a good chance it will be this way through January, so it will be a pretty dark Christmas,” Mrs DeGregory-Miaoulis said prior to the emergence of the fire department solution. “Everything is going to be on shedding schedules. The lady that works with me, her power was off all day yesterday [Tuesday], came back on at 5am this morning and went back off at 8am.

“That means no power, no Internet, no communication. People who don’t have generators, or cannot afford them, they are going to lose their food produce in their refrigerators. There’s no point in putting anything in the oven because you don’t know if it can be finished. It makes life very tough. If power goes out, water does too, if you are not on a well system.”

The ex-Chamber president agreed that many Abaco businesses have “already adapted to life without power” post-Hurricane Dorian, and were able maintain business as usual due to their stand-by generators. “Businesses are not affected as much as residents. But it drives their costs up because generators are more expensive to run with diesel fuel,” she added.

“Are they [BPL[ going to bill for this time without power? Are they going to be expected to be paid on top of people running their generators? Is BPL going to credit them for the time they didn’t have power? That’s a question I’d like to have answers to. Somebody’s got to pay for the extra costs, and it’s usually the consumers. It’s a mess.”

Mr Pinder yesterday also urged BPL to consider crediting customer bills given “the enormous amount of outages and distribution problems that we have had in this coming to Christmas time”. Persons have also reported destroyed and damaged electrical equipment as a result of BPL’s challenges, and the MP urged Jobeth Coleby-Davis, minister of energy and transport, to accelerate planned generation and overall energy reforms.

Mrs DeGregory-Miaoulis, meanwhile, said the power woes could not have come at a worse time for Abaco’s tourism sector heading into the holiday season. “If stayover visitors are in a home with no AC and constant power outages, they are on the next plane out of there and it leaves a very poor taste in their mouths. Are they going to be rushing back?” she warned.

“This also jeopardises our tourism market. If a homeowner has rented out their home, and visitors have to move out as a result, are they going to credit them for the time not stayed? It’s not the homeowner’s fault but it’s equally not the visitors’ fault because they have not had the benefits they paid for.

“It hurts all around. It puts a damper on Christmas celebrations because people like to spend time with their families and have fun. Instead, they’ll be gathered round candles and praying that the turkey gets done.”

The Abaco cays were not spared from BPL’s woes. Hope Town suffered a malfunction on its generation unit and, although four new units were secured in August, the destination can accommodate only one at a time because of the lack of land. Attempts to feed Hope Town from Man-O-War Cay also failed when a transformer malfunctioned there.