Two-day blackout in Barbados
By George Alleyne
Barbados has suffered two days
of continuous power cuts across
the island crippling businesses,
cancelling schools, shutting polyclinics,
gas stations, and airport
check-in kiosks while depleting
services like water supply and
telecommunications that hinged
their delivery on electricity supply
from the provider, Barbados
Light and Power (BL&P).
And the future is gloomy
because BL&P Managing Director,
Roger Blackman warned that
based on the company’s ageing
equipment and contaminated
fuel that got into those plants,
more major outages are expected.
The first island-wide shut
down began just after 7 am Monday
and, as company workers
struggled to return power to the
130,000 customers throughout
the day, some households did
not regain their electricity supply
until 11 pm.
What made matters worse was
that the water supply went out
in tandem with the power cut
because pumping stations across
the island were solely dependent
BL&P for electricity.
Mobile phone and Internet
services were kept going, but
fixed telephone lines and Internet
routers attached to homes
and businesses went down.
Consumers had maybe just
enough time to absorb the banner
headlines in the Tuesday
morning newspapers screaming,
‘Outages Fear’ and ‘Powerless’
before suffering another islandwide
power cut, again around
7 am.
And just like Monday, power
was being painstakingly restored
zone by zone across the island.
BL&P hurriedly took to social
media to apologetically state,
“the crisis situation for us is not
over.”
“Overnight one of our large
diesel engines shut down again
due to another stuck fuel pump
and this morning we find ourselves
in a similar situation with
customers without electricity.”
Problems surrounding stuck
fuel pumps Monday and Tuesday
are owed to contaminated
fuel the company received and
unknowingly placed into its generating
system.
Prime Minister, Mia Mottley
got on radio and said the situation,
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The circumstances surrounding
repeated blackouts in two
successive days with the likelihood
of there being more is
reminiscent of the island’s turmoil
in 1973 when the world was
seized by a fuel crisis spurred by
demands from the Organisation
of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
While the experience is similar,
the causes now are very
much different.
Much of the causes are related
to government’s decision to
move the island to 100 percent
renewable energy consumption.
Towards this goal, government
in September passed in
parliament an ‘Electric Light and
Power (Amendment) Bill 2019’
that permitted persons to set up
commercial alternative renewable
energy plants and sell power
generated to the BL&P grid.
This according to Minister of
Energy, Wilfred Abrahams signals
a move away from the BL&P
monopoly on the production and
sale of electricity on the island.
He indicated there were several
independent agencies lining
up to invest in alternative energy
in Barbados with investments
reaching into the hundreds of
millions of dollars.
The imminent entry of competition
to BL&P, which is also
establishing its own solar energy
farm, meant that the company
had no financial incentive
to invest money in upgrading
its fossil fuel energy generating
plant stock as it may all become
obsolete by 2030.
Barbados Minister of Energy, Wilfred Abrahams.
Photo by George Alleyne
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