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BL&P, BWA ‘make restoration headway’

by Barbados Today
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Experts and the Government have reached consensus that considerable progress has been made to stabilize electricity generation and water distribution systems following two days of island-wide outages earlier this week, Barbados TODAY has learned.

Barbados Light & Power Company and Barbados Water Authority officials, senior civil servants and advisors met with Prime Minister Mia Mottley and some Ministers for the third consecutive day.

More than 4,000 cubic metres of heavy fuel oil with additives that officials believed contributed significantly to the failure of turbines that resulted in the blackouts had been pumped out the tank at the company’s Spring Garden plant back to the fuel storage depot at Holborn, according to Light and Power.

This draining of the fuel is to be completed by late this evening, the electric company said, to leave workers with a clear weekend window to prepare to receive a new shipment of clean fuel on Monday morning.

By Saturday, test results on the suspect fuel from an overseas lab are expected to be in the hands of officials of the Barbados National Terminal Company Limited, the Government fuel importer.

In order to guarantee that there are no issues relating to the pumping of fuel to or from the primary generating plant at Spring Garden, BL&P and BNTCL now have three backup pumps ready to be pressed into service in the event of a failure, the officials said.

In another development, Light and Power through its parent Emera has secured a temporary 12-megawatt generator, which is now loaded on a ship in Panama and set to sail for Barbados, arriving on December 5.

A further ten to 12 days on – around December 15-17, the turbine should be installed and commissioned, Light and Power said. Much of the infrastructure to accommodate that generator is already in place, it added.

While this is taking place, BL&P and Emera are to step up the search for additional “dual fuel” turbines that will generate another 25-plus megawatts of power.

To smooth the arrival of the generators at the port and their swift delivery to Spring Garden, Prime Minister Mottley has detailed Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams to chair immediate talks between BL&P,  Customs, Barbados Port Inc. an other agencies on clearing all hurdles.

To ensure that the Light and Power is on top of all the issues that led to the power outages, ensures the affected generators return to full capacity, and further expands the knowledge base of local staff, a specialized three-member mechanical team was flown into Barbados on Thursday from The Bahamas, as well as a four-member team from the equipment-maker in Korea.

These additional resources will result in a 24-hour maintenance programme at the electric company.

While all this work is to continue over the weekend, the full group is scheduled to meet again with the Prime Minister on Monday evening to update her on progress.

On the issue of water outages, which were worsened significantly by the power cuts, Barbadians should expect a return to normal service over the weekend.

Water Authority officials have explained that while water to most households and businesses is fed from the reservoirs by gravity, electric pumps are required to get it from the wells and desalination plant to those reservoirs.

It is that process of replenishing reservoirs that can take more than 24 hours in some instances, creating a lag
between the restoration of power and the flow of water to the taps.

Additionally, many of the dry taps in the south, west and north of the island over the last 48 hours were caused by the failure of pumps at Hampton, St. Philip and Carlton St. James. The unexpected collapse of a floor at Hampton during repair work on Thursday compounded the problem.

But the Hampton pumps were expected to be fully functional again by this evening, while crews worked through the night at Carlton, also with the aim of resuming pumping sometime today.

Once the Carlton station is back online, water that was being temporarily diverted at Trents, St. James to the West Coast, should once again start flowing fully toward Lancaster and other higher elevations, resulting in a resumption of full service to such areas such as Shop Hill and its vicinity in St Thomas.

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