BL&P: We’re ready

The nation’s lone power utility has given an assurance its power system is robust enough to handle any eventualities as an over-active hurricane season churns out Tropical Storm Elsa.

Touting beefed-up fuel reserves, transport, standby generators and other supplies, Light and Power officials said they were in a position to quickly respond to customers, start restoration and protect the company’s systems.

Johann Greaves, BL&P’s Director of Operations and the head of its hurricane team, insisted that the company’s communications network is up to scratch.

The assurances came during a media briefing as the country began preparations for a major tropical storm that could affect the island as early as Friday morning.

“We are as a utility prepared to deal with the impact of the system, whatever it maybe,” said Greaves.

“As of today, we tested all of our standby generators and all operational and emergency portable supplies . . . all of our fuel tanks [and] generators are at working levels and in some cases we are today bringing them to the maximum capacity to ensure that we have as much fuel storage as we can for continued operation of our generators over the next few days.”

He also pointed out that the company would be doing its best to maintain electrical supplies as long as it could during a storm “once it is safe to do so”.

Adding that the officials were poised to begin assessment and restoration as soon as possible after a hurricane system, Greaves explained that several “pieces of equipment are pre-staged at various parts of the island such that if one part of the island is impacted more severely than others that all the equipment is not damaged, and if roads are impassable we have equipment at various staging points where we can easily start our restoration efforts”.

Further outlining the company’s hurricane season preparation, Systems Restoration Coordinator for the company’s hurricane team, Roger Beckles, indicated that preparation for the hurricane season began as early as March this year.

“Among our actions during the early period was to assess critical supplies and inventory to ensure we were well stocked. Due to the impact of COVID-19 on our suppliers we started procurement earlier than normal,” he said.

“At the generating sites we looked at the various fuel reserves, maintaining at least two to three weeks of capacity,” said Beckles, adding that the substations and building structures have been adequately checked and team members have undergone severe weather simulations on their desktops.

He added: “We have an extensive use of technology which is now part of our restoration process. Drone usage is now a part of Light & Power’s operations and storm response . . . such as line inspections and this will become extremely useful if there is widespread devastation after a hurricane. Adding drone technology to our inspections will no doubt quicken assessment and provide greater accuracy and detail.”

Beckles said with a high level of preparation, the company would be focusing on limiting and mitigating possible impacts from weather systems, especially from trees that tended to be one of the major hindrances to a more timely intervention.

Looking back on the June 17 freak storm, which left several communities without electricity for over 24 hours, Beckles, the BL&P Senior Engineering Manager, said trees were the cause of many of the outages.

But declaring that “a lot of time has been spent addressing these trees”, Beckles urged landowners to also play their part by trimming their overgrown lots and to desist from planting vegetation near power lines.

The assurance of adequate capacity to quickly respond came on the heels of the freak storm which knocked down some power lines, blew off roofs and left roughly one in five of the island’s households – about 26,000 customers – without electricity.

It also comes against the background of major criticism the utility faced in November 2019, following two days of island-wide power outages.

On Monday, November 18, all of the company’s approximately 130,000 customers woke up to a blackout about 7:30 a.m.

While power was restored just after 11 p.m. that day, the next day the utility company reported that one of its largest diesel engines shut down due to a stuck fuel pump overnight, leaving customers again without electricity for several hours.
(marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb)