Thousands of Barbados Light and Power (BL&P) customers who were without electricity for most of yesterday had their service restored by 8:10 p.m. the same day, the company said in a release.
Generation issues, which have occurred recently, reared their head again on Friday.
At the time, BL&P said it was “an unusual series of events for the Company and its employees are working around the clock to resolve the issues and to safely restore generation capacity”.
Managing director Roger Blackman said there was a problem with the fuel injection equipment; a fuel pump was not at optimum and they were performing maintenance.
“Light & Power believes that the issues will be resolved over the next few days, which will minimise the need for ‘load sharing’ among its residential customers,” it said in a statement. “However, in the interim, some customers may be affected by power outages.”
Service was quickly restored to sections of Christ Church, St James, St John, St George and St Michael, but thousands more were without power.
In St Peter, some of the affected areas included Retreat, Half Moon Fort, Checker Hall, Port St Charles, Port Ferdinand; and some sections of St Philip, including Six Roads, Beulah, Ruby, Wellhouse, Bel Air, Crane and Union were similarly affected. Parts of The City, branching out to Whitepark Road, Country Road, Lodge Hill, Bush Hall and Bank Hall were also without power.
The spillover effect meant that some residents had no water because electricity was needed to fuel the pumps.
Telephone and Internet services were offline in some areas, affecting about 5 000 people across the FLOW network.
The Barbados Water Authority (BWA) said its ability to provide water was hampered by its pumps going offline.
“The BWA relies mainly on electrical generation from the BL&P to power its stations, therefore these electrical outages may result in the inability of the authority to pump water in several areas and hence a loss of supply to customers through the pipes,” the Barbados Water Authority said in the statement.
“While the BWA cannot control where these electrical outages may occur, it stands ready to assist persons via water tanker as a temporary measure wherever possible,” the company added.
BL&P apologised to customers and thanked them for their patience. (PR/SAT)
