Bad weather causes Sunday’s mass outages

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – INCLEMENT weather has been identified as the cause of the island-wide power outages that gripped St. Kitts throughout Sunday (July 5).

In what was a hellish day for electricity consumers, the power supply in various communities was interrupted on Saturday evening (July 4) and early Sunday morning, culminating in an island-wide outage at around midday that lasted approximately three hours. Just when persons were beginning to feel secure, residents of St. Peter’s and New Road again lost power late that evening.

A release from the St. Kitts Electricity Department issued yesterday (July 6) informed that lightning, strong winds and heavy rains resulted in outages on sections of the Bayfords, Canada, Cayon and Sandy Point feeders in the early morning hours. It further revealed that shortly after noon, a lightning strike caused the system to become unstable, which triggered the automatic protection for the Aggreko containers and caused them to shut down. Consequently, electricity was lost throughout the island.

The release also expounded on the steps taken by the Department to fix the problem, noting “Engineers and technicians carried out all the necessary checks on generators and equipment…and field technicians carried the necessary checks and reconfiguration of feeders before the system of reconfiguration began”.

It also states that the system of restoration began at 1:50 p.m. to areas supplied by the St. Kitts Sugar Manufacturing Company feeder and culminated in restoration to the Frigate Bay community at 6:24 p.m.

Since an early morning fire at the Needsmust Power Station on October 2, the electricity supply on St. Kitts has been sketchy. The fire caused the plant to lose its two largest engines and a system of load-shedding was subsequently instituted.

In December, the government began a six-month rental of generators from Agreco International Projects Ltd. in order to compensate for the two generators lost in the fire. Additionally, with a 2009 budget allocation of $99.8M, Minister of Public Works Dr. the Hon. Earl Asim Martin had promised the supplementary funds would allow his ministry to address short-term infrastructural upgrades to ensure stability of the system. 

However, problems with the supply persist, as two weeks ago corporate activity in Basseterre was severely hindered by a mid-morning power interruption on June 17. Speaking to SKNVibes at that time, Martin categorically asserted there was nothing wrong with the Power Station.

“The new protection system which we put in place protected the engines. Once there is a problem outside, it closes off certain engines...out of all the problems we had last year, we installed this system to protect the engines at the Station if there is a problem outside in the field.

“There is no problem in the Power Station. What happened is that because of the mechanism in the protection system, whenever there is a problem at the Power Station, outside in the field, it closes down certain generators at the Station.”