Load shedding to end next week, says Electricity Dept. 

By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com

The destroyed Mirrlees 12MB engine

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts- AFTER about one week of haphazard electricity outages across the island, officials at the Needsmust Power Station declared yesterday (Oct. 9) that barring “unforeseen difficulties” the island should be back to a state of normalcy no later than October 17.

Following the October 2 fire which destroyed one Mirrlees engine and incapacitated the control panel of a second, the power generating capacity of the station was reduced to about 15 megawatts (MW), 6.5 MW less than the amount necessary to meet St. Kitts’ needs during peak hours. This resulted in island-wide load shedding.

Minister of Public Works, Utilities, Transport and Post, Dr. Hon. Earl Asim Martin made the announcement of electricity relief at a press conference yesterday (Oct. 9), when he assured that  “the ministry has been making an all out effort to provide some easement during this critical period”

According to Martin, workers have been able to partially bring online a Caterpillar engine that was undergoing repairs for an additional 2.5MW, bringing St. Kitts’ current capacity to 17.5MW.

While St. Kitts needs roughly 24 MW to meet the demand at peak hours, Martin said that the Electricity Department would soon bring online a dormant generator in the La Valle area to help alleviate the situation.

“There is a generator there in Sandy Point which provides a capacity of 2.5 MW. The Electricity Department has already laid the

(From left to right) John Channer, Manager of the Needsmust Power Station; Dr. Hon. Earl Asim Martin, Minister of Utilities; and Terry Burns, MAN Diesel Regional Consultant

necessary cables to the generator and we are now in the process of carrying out the necessary testing of that generator to ensure that we will be able to bring it online. 

“All things being positive we should have that generator online by the weekend, which will give us 20 MW,” he said.

The Minister’s announcement on La Valle came two days after Opposition Leader Lindsey Grant called on the government to make use of the dormant engine. Martin, however, said that government had been aware of the generator before Grant’s comments and were already in the process of bringing it online. 

As for Grant’s claims that the two damaged Mirrlees engines were “prototypes”, MAN Diesel’s Regional Consultant Terry Burns said these accusations are false.

“None of the engines operating in the St. Kitts power station are ‘prototypes’,” Burns said. “The Mirrlees MB 430 series of engines [which were the type damaged] have been in operation around the world in countries like China, Brazil and Switzerland since 1987.”

Burns also noted that the Mirrlees engines have been the workhorses of St. Kitts, providing 45% of the island’s power in the past year as compared to the 16% from the station’s Caterpillar engines. 

~~Adz:Left~~ Burns and his team of experts are currently in the process of building a new panel for the 6MW Mirrlees engine, which they believe will be operational next week and fill as the final piece of the puzzle to end the load shedding.

As for the continued load shedding, Needsmust Power Station Operations Engineer C. Jomo Williams said that “no section should be without power for more than six hours” though the exact time of those six hours may vary from the schedule due to weather conditions and faults in the grid. 

Williams’ assurance of six-hour outages, however, was greeted with skepticism by some residents, such as those under the Basseterre North Feeder (West Farm, Boyd’s Village, Camps, ect.) who have complained that “our power has been out for at least ten hours a day every day since the incident”.

During the conference, Martin thanked the workers at the power station and in his ministry for “their hard work above and beyond the call of duty during this crisis”.

He also said the ministry would be undertaking the advisement of the visiting experts to implement safeguards to prevent any future fires at the power station from knocking out engines.