The Barbados Water Authority (BWA) is moving towards generating its own power to pump water in the wake of blackouts, Minister of Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams has said.
But the Minister warned that while the BWA intends to install generators at all of its pumping stations, the money would first have to be sourced as it was a costly project.
On Monday and Tuesday, around 130,000 customers of the electric utility were left without power, as the BL&P blamed the blackout on dirty fuel and aging turbines.
The BWA is the BL&P’s single biggest customer.
The BWA currently has generators at 11 installations, which means it was still able to pump water during the power outage, according to the Minister.
“It is a priority for us to have some generation at all of our installations.
“We don’t wish to be subject to external sources in the provision of our electricity.
“That fact that we are now serviced majority by the BL&P is a significant cost to us as a company and it also makes our efficiency and reliability dependent on somebody else, so we are outfitting as many of our pumping stations and installations with renewable energy in one instance and we are also ensuring that we have full generation capacity at all the stations.
“But that comes at a serious cost. I am not going to sit here and pretend to you that we have all the money in the world because we don’t.
“We are struggling with a financially-strapped company to make the best of a bad situation.
“But the Prime Minister has indicated that it is a priority and we are working assiduously to get generation capacity at all of them but we have to do it as resources allow.”
Abrahams declared that had the power outage occurred when the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) was in power, the situation would have been much worse.
He said it was only after the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) took over the reins of Government that generators were installed at those pumping stations.
Abrahams said: “What I will tell you is had this exact thing when the electricity was down for two days happened 18 months ago, or even a year ago, then nowhere in Barbados would have had water.
“The fact that some areas in Barbados still had water and we were still able to service our customers during prolonged outages is due to the fact the we as a Government installed generation capacity at strategic locations to prevent against this entire situation.
“It was done as a disaster mitigation measure.”
