Light & Power vows rapid response during hurricane season

The nation’s electric utility on Thursday declared itself “fully prepared” for the  Atlantic hurricane season, pledging swift and safe restoration of electricity across the island if disaster strikes.

After months of simulations, equipment checks, and staff training, the company said it is ready to keep the nation powered through the unpredictable months ahead.

Director of Operations Johann Greaves gave an assurance that the company has done its groundwork to protect and restore power islandwide.

“We are at the point now where we have, I can say that we’ve done months of preparation, simulations and we are ready for the season. Every season is different as I said but we are prepared to face whatever comes our way. We can’t give you a guarantee and the timeline of the restoration because each system is different and the damage has to be assessed for each individual situation.

“But you can be certain that if your power is on that there are 400-plus persons behind the scenes who are working diligently to restore your power safely and as quickly as possible.”

Speaking at a press briefing at the company’s Maynards substation in St Peter, Greaves detailed the wide scope of pre-season activity, from staff training and vegetation management to stockpiling critical supplies.

“Over the past few months we would have completed a lot of our preparation and what you heard today was a lot of what we would have done over the past few months. Light & Power has over 400 employees who train, who do simulations continuously throughout the year to be able to respond to any event that comes our way. Now while I say that we are ready, every system is different.”

Safety, he stressed, remains the company’s top priority in all restoration efforts.

“You heard the importance of safety with every system. The paramount importance is to ensure that we can restore power safely. Okay, so safety is a big item when we are doing any restoration.

“We want to be able to restore your power as quickly as possible, but we want to ensure that it’s done as safely as possible and as such all of our employees train to be able to do that safely.”

Beyond the frontline workers, Greaves highlighted the contributions of support staff, subcontractors, and government agencies that collaborate with Light & Power during major weather events.

“This morning you saw a number of the persons from the operations team, from customer care, you saw persons from safety, but there are many, many other persons behind the scenes… who may not be visible to the public but extend tremendous effort… We also work with a number of contractors or subcontractors who, without their assistance, would make our job a lot more difficult… all the other agencies, government agencies and whoever else will contribute towards the overall process of restoration.”

Preparations for the season begin well in advance, Greaves explained, including trimming trees near power lines and ensuring that equipment and parts are on island or en route by early June.

“We start our preparation from the end of one season to very early in the year… to ensure that we have — by this time of the year — if not all of our critical stock on island, they will be on the sea to arrive here within another few days or few weeks.”

Once the all-clear is given, Light & Power is expected to deploy restoration teams — beginning at power generation plants and working outwards towards rural customers.

Greaves added that the utility remains connected to the regional network of Caribbean utilities, CARILEC, and is able to both lend and receive support when necessary, though in most recent cases it has managed internally.

“Luckily… we’ve never had to call any significant persons to assist us,” he said, noting that the last time CARILEC was last asked for support was during Elsa, to help with restoration.

“[We recognised] that our employees… were getting to the point where they were tired and we obviously needed to ensure that we did not have fatigue and accidents starting to set in,” he said.

While no utility can fully predict or prevent storm damage, Greaves insisted that Light & Power has taken every measure possible to face the months ahead with confidence.

“We recognise the importance of electricity to everyday life and therefore we understand the inconvenience of not having power,” he said. “So as far as possible with every system we devise a plan to come up with a means by which we can supply power as long as possible.” (SZB)