Investigations continuing into cause of island-wide outage

The Barbados Light and Power Co Ltd is continuing investigations into the cause of last Tuesday’s island-wide blackout.

However, preliminary information is suggesting it was a fault on one of the generator’s circuit breakers, says a media release from director of operations, Johann Greaves.

“We can confirm that the outage commenced at our Spring Garden Generation plant. While investigating a fault on one of the generator’s circuit breaker, a flash over occurred. The safety protection equipment on adjacent generating units detected this fault resulting in them tripping offline,” the release said.

Light & Power’s Director Operations, Johann Greaves. (GP)

“This led to cascading effects with other utility and distributed renewable energy systems tripping leading to an island wide power outage. Thankfully we can report that no one was injured during the incident.”

A report has been submitted to the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) and in about six weeks, that organisation should have a full report on the root cause of the outage.

“Any corrective actions identified in this investigation will be implemented. We understand that, for residents and businesses across Barbados, a loss of electricity is an inconvenience, and we sincerely regret the interruption in service.”

The outage occurred around 11:32 a.m. By 1 p.m., some of the most critical areas including the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the air and seaports and Bridgetown were back online, and by 3 p.m., 75 per cent of households and businesses were online.

Full restoration was achieved at 5:17 p.m.

The Barbados Light and Power Co. currently has an application before the FTC for a rate increase. (PR/SAT)