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Barbados facing electricity and water problems

Published:Tuesday | November 19, 2019 | 11:10 AM
CMC photo

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Barbadians were on Tuesday facing the prospect of another day without electricity even as the lone electricity company, the Barbados Light and Power Company (BL&P), said it was working to restore full restoration as soon as possible.

Many people have taken to social media to complain about the lack of electricity and water supplies.

The electricity problems forced the early closure of several businesses, schools as well as affected several residential areas on Monday.

BL&P’s managing director, Roger Blackman, said the blackout, which began on Monday, was caused by “a fault” which originated at the company’s substation on the outskirts of the capital.

He said while the company had “identified and isolated that fault and started restoration,” during the process “some of our generators experienced challenges similar to what we have experienced or encountered last week when we had fuel equipment issues on two of our largest generators which were delaying full restoration.

“We would have had fuel pump challenges and we have been having discussions with our fuel supplier in relation to addressing that issue. In the meanwhile, we have teams working on both units replace the affected equipment and return those units,” he added.

Blackman said that the company had implemented measures to deal with the problems regarding the fuel supply and that work is “ongoing to investigate and determine exactly what corrective measures need to be taken but again until that is fully resolved we are in a delicate situation in relation to that plan.

“Our heavy fuel oil units represent maybe 70 per cent of total generation and so it is going to be critical that we resolve this issue going forward and to ensure that we don’t continue to experience the unreliability challenges that we have been experiencing.”

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