By Shamar Blunt
Operations at businesses and other organisations across the island were abruptly cut short on Tuesday, after the country experienced an island-wide power outage around 11:32 a.m.
Shortly after the initial blackout, the Barbados Light & Power Company (BL&P) notified customers that efforts were being made to restore power, while seeking to establish the source of the issue. The BL&P later confirmed that the outage started at the Spring Garden plant.
In the City, many businesses quickly closed their doors due to the lack of redundant power generation.
Just after 1:15 p.m parts of St Lucy, Christ Church, St Philip and the Grantley Adams International Airport were back online and after 2:30 p.m. 75 per cent of customers had their power restored.
In an official press statement released around 5:30 p.m., BL&P stated: “Today, we experienced an island-wide outage at approximately 11:30 a.m. and with that, our generation and leadership teams immediately activated the company’s emergency and restoration plans. We can confirm now that the outage commenced at our Spring Garden generation plant and as we speak, our teams are still investigating to understand more about what caused this to occur.
“However, from the start, all efforts were focused on ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees and the public. We are happy to report that there were no injuries as a result of the outage event,” the statement said.
The company confirmed that restoration would be done in a methodical manner with the first priority to restore generation before bringing power back on to the transmission network.
“Our last customers were restored at approximately 5:15 p.m…A root cause analysis will be undertaken now that we are fully restored.”
The statement also gave assurances that the Prime Minister, the Minister of Energy, key personnel from the Ministry of Energy and the Fair Trading Commission were informed about the outages, and investigations into the situation were continuing.
Meanwhile, just after 2 pm, all offices of the Supreme Court, the Registration Department and all Magistrates’ Courts closed for the remainder of the day due to the outage. Services at the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) were also affected by the power interruption.
Just after 2 p.m. the BWA said that it was: “…working to restore the water supply by pressing its generators into service. In the interim, customers in some parts of the island may experience water outages or low water pressure.”
