The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

PRIME Minister Philip Davis defended his administration’s handling of the electricity crisis, insisting yesterday’s island-wide blackout was caused by factors beyond the government’s control and warning Bahamians that further disruptions could occur as the power system is overhauled.

His comments came hours after an electrical fire at Bahamas Power and Light’s Blue Hills Power Station plunged New Providence into darkness, forcing residents from sweltering homes and disrupting businesses and airport operations.

The failure renewed scrutiny of the Davis administration’s previous assurances that BPL was ready to meet summer demand, with this summer’s outages ranking among the worst in a decade on an issue by which every administration is judged.

Mr Davis acknowledged his frustration and disappointment but rejected suggestions that the blackout reflected inadequate maintenance or a lack of effort by BPL and his administration.

“I am frustrated because the act that would cause these outages is not because of lack of maintenance, not because of the transformative work that is happening, but rather because of factors beyond our control,” he said.

BPL said a suspected underground cable fault caused a fire involving a 15 MVA transformer, shutting down generation at the Blue Hills and Clifton Pier power stations.

However, BPL officials said the investigation into the root cause was continuing, and they had not determined what initially caused the cable to fail.

Asked why widespread outages persisted after the government said BPL was prepared for summer, Mr Davis pointed to excessive heat and questioned whether the transformer failure could fairly be blamed on human error.

“You have a transformer that's blown up because of overheating of underground cables, was that man's fault?” he said. “The excessive heat, the record heat that we are experiencing over the last several months. May, for example, was the hottest in history. June — same thing.”

Mr Davis said the heat was overwhelming the transmission and distribution system.

Mr Davis urged Bahamians to remain patient and warned that the modernisation of BPL’s ageing infrastructure could bring further interruptions.

“There will be growing pains to get to where we need to be because of what we inherited,” he said, adding that his administration inherited an archaic system in which much of the infrastructure had reached the end of its useful life.

“Incidents like these remind us of the state of play of BPL,” he said.

Mr Davis also disclosed that BPL had lost institutional knowledge about the electricity grid and did not have a complete inventory showing the location of underground cables.

“For example, the institutional knowledge of the grid in the BPL, BEC is no longer there,” he said. “Where the underground cables are, there's no asset inventory. We're now trying to develop that.”

The Prime Minister said he had asked BPL to consider concessions for customers affected by the blackout and that the utility would determine what it could do.

He argued that The Bahamas was not alone in experiencing power-delivery problems but said the government was focused on addressing the country’s deficiencies.

“If you do your investigative reporting and understand what's happening around the world, you see that The Bahamas is not unique in what is happening with power delivery,” he said. “But we are not looking at elsewhere, we're dealing with our own problems, we are facing those problems, and we are delivering aggressively.”

Mr Davis pointed to transmission and distribution upgrades, new substations and renewable energy projects at Blue Hills as evidence that work to modernise the system was continuing.

He said the completed Blue Hills project would include 20 megawatts of solar generation and 25 megawatts of battery storage.

BPL chief operating officer Anthony Christie said the underground cable may have had an existing fault that became apparent under heavy electrical loading.

“It would have exploded, or the fault would have become apparent due to load on it,” he said. “Once that happened, the chain reaction was other cables in that same immediate vicinity would have also faulted.”

Mr Christie denied that poor maintenance contributed to the incident but stressed that the investigation was ongoing.

BPL executive chairman Christina Alston later said in a statement that the company had launched an investigation, with preliminary assessments indicating that a suspected underground cable fault led to the transformer fire.

Ms Alston acknowledged that BPL’s contingency arrangements had limits when several major incidents occurred in close succession.

“That is not an excuse,” she said. “It is the reality we're confronting — and responsibility we understand.”

She also acknowledged that public confidence would have to be rebuilt through measurable improvements in reliability and communication, saying assurances alone would not restore trust.

BPL chief executive officer Toni Pratt apologised to New Providence residents and said electricity had been systematically restored to most of the island, although some customers would continue to experience outages while repairs were completed.

“We do want to apologize to the residents of New Providence because we know that its an inconvenience,” Ms Pratt said. “We know that it is very, very hot, and we understand your frustration. We are working as safely and as quickly as we possibly can to restore supply.”

Bahamas Grid Company chief operating officer Ryan Holder said crews began assessing the damaged transformer overnight and expected repairs to take between eight and ten hours.

He said teams were excavating the affected area, installing new conduit and laying replacement cable while working around energised infrastructure.