The Tribune

BY ANNELIA NIXON

TRIBUNE Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

NEW Providence businesses yesterday warned that repeated Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) outages are disrupting operations, delaying customer orders and increasing costs with many now mulling whether they can afford not to invest in back-up generation.

Matthew Sweeting, operator of Commonwealth Funeral Home, said the outages have changed how he views back-up power after a recent family viewing was disrupted.

“We had a viewing, and when the family was supposed to come, it was hot,” he said. “I had to get some lights. And then afterwards I had to get a generator. So now I have to get a big generator that can run my business now. It’s a priority now. It’s essential,” Mr Sweeting explained.

He said that although he previously owned a generator, it was stolen several years ago and he has operated without one ever since. “And then I had bypassed two or three years without it,” he said. “But now it’s essential, at least for my funeral profession. It’s essential.”

Commonwealth Funeral Home was without electricity into the following day during last Thursday’s island-wide outage. “Home was off from 1 o’clock to 10 o’clock the other day, and also at my business it was like nine until the next day,” Mr Sweeting said, adding that BPL power also failed twice over the weekend.

Michael Turner, owner of Jumper Brothers Bakery, said the bakery has no back-up generator and production slows significantly whenever power was lost. He said employees were left waiting for hours because they could not safely continue working in the dark.

“I was unable to get people’s orders out as fast as I would have liked to,” he said. “People sat down for hours because they couldn’t see in order to work. I had to pay people. They worked so I still had to pay them. There was no compensation in no kind of way.

“And when time up, I can’t hold them against their time, so what doesn’t get done gets left or I’ll have to cover it. Or I’ll have to let it go, and there’s no compensation for it.” While most customers understood, some expected Jumper Brothers Bakery to have a back-up generator in place.

“Some persons were irritated,” Mr Turner said. “Some of them expect you to have a generator. But, for the most part, persons understood, and they were willing to wait.”

Retailers also reported noticeable declines in customer traffic and sales. Ms Sarah, operator of Shore Boutique, said her store is forced to close whenever card payment systems become unavailable because of BPL’s outages.

“We had one day off,” she said. “But thankfully the rest of the time we’ve been up. We were impacted because, obviously, without power,we can’t do charges, so we just couldn’t stay open.”

Ms Sarah said one outage kept the business closed until midday because payment verifications could not be processed through the banking system. “There’s no way to call into the banks for verification on charges, so we do lose,” she said. “But thankfully, as we’re a local business, our customers do come back.

“We did have some tourists come by, and they didn’t come back, but the locals did.” Beyond payment issues, Ms Sarah said the outages and extreme heat discouraged consumers from shopping altogether.

“The heat and frustration has impacted overall sales because it made people not come out,” she said. “People who said they were coming didn’t come any more because they were stressed out. It definitely impacted overall last week’s sales from Thursday through the weekend. It was definitely noticeable.”

Elizabeth Bullard, manager of My Wish List gift boutique, said power interruptions primarily affect electronic payments because many shoppers rely on debit and credit cards. Businesses without generators inside shopping plazas often have little choice but to shut their doors because they lack natural ventilation.

“If you have a shop in a plaza, you don’t have windows,” she said. “So if you don’t have a generator, and the AC cuts out, then we also have to close down because we can’t operate at all.”

Although My Wish List has generator back-up, she said it still experienced challenges. “We did not have to close down,” Ms Bullard said “But it did take a few seconds to kick-in. It did affect our AC. Constant cutting off and then cutting back on, on the generator, so it tripped the power source for a bit.”

Virginia McKinney, owner of a waste management company, said her office can continue operating because it has a manually-operated generator, although telecommunications disruptions that occur during outages remain a concern.

“We do have a generator,” she said. “It doesn’t kick in automatically, and since we don’t work in the evening, we’re over there in the day and we can turn it on manually.

“For us, the impact is not like it is for other businesses with refrigeration and stuff like that. The only problem is if BTC goes down at the same time, which often will occur in the landfill area. Then that becomes a huge problem with customers being able to get hold of us.”

Ms McKinney warned that relying on generators substantially increases operating costs. “It definitely adds up,” she said. “Our last bill from BTC was literally double. We’ve always managed to hold it around the $200. It was $400. It literally doubled.”

She added that prolonged generator use is neither economical nor sustainable. “Running a generator is not a cost-effective thing,” Ms McKinney said. “Most generators are not also designed to continually run. These are all very, very critical, scary things for businesses.”

The concerns come as BPL says New Providence’s electricity network is operating close to its limits. Anthony Christie, its chief operating officer, recently warned that circuits are overloaded and transformers are operating at peak capacity, forcing the utility to shift electrical loads and temporarily relieve pressure on equipment to prevent more serious failures.

BPL has urged residents to reduce electricity consumption, particularly air conditioning use, while also asking government agencies and large commercial customers to switch to back-up generators during periods of peak demand to free additional capacity for residential consumers and small businesses.

Verron Darville, the Government’s deputy director of energy, said government ministries have already been instructed to operate on back-up generation where possible during peak demand periods following energy audits conducted over the past three years to identify opportunities to reduce electricity consumption.

BPL’s warnings followed last week’s island-wide blackout, subsequent localised outages and a transformer overload in the Palmdale area that disrupted electricity supply to businesses and nearby residents after equipment reportedly smoked, caught fire and exploded. BPL has attributed the growing strain on the network to an unprecedented heat wave that has driven increased air conditioning use and pushed electricity demand to record levels.