BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – RESIDENTS of St. Kitts were provided with an explanation following the interruption of electricity supply yesterday morning (Nov. 7), and the double power outage that occurred on Sunday (Nov. 6).
Speaking at a press conference yesterday held by the Energy Ministry to launch CARICOM Energy Week at the Ocean terrace Inn, Chief Executive Officer of the St. Kitts Electricity Company (SKLEC), Mr. William Brooks said that a number of issues were responsible for the power outages that occurred over the two-day period.
“On Sunday, we had a backhoe dig up one of our cables and threw the power out. This morning, it looks as if what happened on Sunday caused the outage at 6:00 this morning. We are still studying what really caused that problem. We had a problem on our Bayfords feeder that added to the outages as well.
“It is not one thing that causes the outages, it is a combination of things and we are studying those things very carefully, and we are putting things in place to step by step approach all these problems and try to solve them,” he stated.
Brooks further stated that an expert should be arriving this coming Saturday (Nov. 12) to measure the company’s protection system noting that this would help minimize the problem but it would not prevent power outages.
He conveyed, “One of the issues we are having is with our protection systems and on Saturday, we are going to have a protection engineer coming in. He is going to be here for one month and he is going to be looking at the protections on the generation side and the protection on the Transmission Distribution side.
“It does not have a golden bullet, we really need to assess it from different angles, and every solution is going to be a step closer to solving the problem.”
When asked about a policy to compensate consumers who report damages to their appliances due to power surges, Brooks urged consumers to use surge protectors as well as other measures to protect their appliances noting that the situation is different if the appliance damage is a result of a direct cause by SKLEC.
Meanwhile, SKLEC has issued an electricity supply interruption schedule for this week (Nov. 7 to 11), which is said to be due to maintenance work.
The daily periods of interruption would be from 8:30 a.m. to 4: 00 p.m.
Yesterday (Nov. 7) the area that was affected was Ponds Extension, and Fry’s Village. The purpose was “Upgrade LV Lines”.
Today (Nov. 8) and tomorrow (Nov. 9), the areas affected would be from Molineaux to Estridge, while the areas to be affected on Thursday (Nov. 10) and Friday (Nov. 11) would Middle Island and Key’s Village respectively all for maintenance work.
SKLEC expressed that it regrets any inconvenience which the interruption in electricity supply may cause, noting that supply may be restored at any time without prior warning.
