Electricity interruption brings standstill to some business entities…
By Terresa McCall
Reporter-SKNVibes.com
~~Adz:Right~~ BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - BUSSINESSES and households around the island were yesterday inconvenienced, when, for little more than an hour, they were without electricity.
Operations ceased at businesses that did not have generators at their disposal at approximately 2:10 p.m. However, the supply was restored at about 3:15 p.m.
Shortly after the restoration of electricity in the Basseterre area, SKNVibes contacted the General Manager of the Electricity Department, John Channer, who explained that the interruption was owing to the Mirrlees 12MB engine tripping offline which caused all other systems to go down.
He described the problem as “a mechanical fault” and informed yesterday, that technicians at the Power Station were working tirelessly to restore the electricity supply. He said that the situation was under control and, at that time, the supply to most of the island had already been restored.
SKNVibes understood, according to reports, that the electricity supply might have been disrupted because a worker of the Electricity Department, who was working in the field, got shocked which caused a chain reaction and left the island powerless. Channer told SKNVibes that while it is true that a worker sustained burns to his hand and leg, that had nothing to do with the interruption in the electricity supply yesterday.
The Electricity Department’s GM said that investigations would be conducted to determine what caused the engine to trip.
Meanwhile, Management of the Electricity Department has issued a press release explaining the outage which took place on Wednesday.
“At 14:01 the Mirrlees12MB430 tripped offline on mechanical fault causing the Mirrlees 8MB 430, the MAN Holeby 4 mw and the Caterpillar # 2 generating sets to also trip offline. As a result the system became unstable forcing Operators to open all feeders. Checks were carried out on engines before the process of restoration began. Operators began feeder restoration at 14:20 when the Canada feeder was closed. All other feeders were closed by 15:33 except Sandy Point and Cayon, which had to be checked by field technicians before restoration. Sandy Point was closed at 16:14 and Cayon 16:28.”
The release concludes with an apology from the said Department for “any inconvenience that the interruption in supply of electricity may have caused”.
