BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – ELECTRICITY consumers on St. Kitts may have to brace for a “brief period” of load-shedding today (May 11), according to officials from the St. Kitts Electricity Department (SKED).
The load-shedding would occur while corrective maintenance is done on two of the plant’s engines, following an outage last evening (May 10) that affected thousands of residents.
SKED officials promised to identify the affected areas as soon as possible, but at press time that information was still unavailable.
Yesterday’s disruption was the second in as many days for St. Peters residents, who endured a 90-minute outage on Sunday (May 9) from 9:00 to 10:30 p.m.
Consumers on the Bayfords, Sandy Point, Canada and C.A. Paul Southwell Industrial Site feeders were also affected.
Although a SKED release claimed last night’s interruption occurred at 8:00, SKNVibes confirmed that many households were without power for up to 15 minutes before then.
The communiqué further stated that an “engine trip event” was behind the outage. It also stated that power was restored in all areas, with the exception of Sandy Point, by 8:30 p.m.
Electricity was restored to Sandy Point consumers at approximately 10:30 p.m.
Today’s load-shedding follows consecutive island-wide blackouts last week that paralysed the island and frustrated consumers. Repair work on the Industrial Site feeder was attributed as the source of the power failure.
Speaking to SKNVibes at that time, Minister of Energy Hon. Asim Martin reassured that the government was still committed to providing a “consistent and reliable” electricity supply.
But he was unable to predict whether there might be further supply interruptions in the near future, highlighting that there would always be problems “out of the station’s control”.
