Rural Areas Brace for Major Power Outage on Friday

By L.K. Hewlett
Editor- SKNVibes.com

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – ELECTRICITY consumers in the rural areas of St. Kitts are being asked to prepare for extensive power outages over the next coming days as the Electricity Department makes critical upgrades to its system.

Villages located between Canada Estate and Dieppe Bay will be the first affected by the interruptions tomorrow Friday, May 30th, with Palmetto Point to Fig Tree experiencing interruptions on Monday, June 2nd, Ottleys to Dieppe Bay on Tuesday, June 3rd and Conyers to Fig Tree on Wednesday, June 4th.

According to Nubian Greaux, the engineer responsible for protection and planning at the Power Station, the interruptions are “for a good cause” and the areas will only be affected from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“We will be replacing the old analog relays with digital/multi-functional relays. This upgrade makes it necessary to interrupt the supply of electricity while we do the work,” he said.

“The electricity supply in the affected areas may return before the scheduled time once we are able to complete the work before 4 p.m. We don’t anticipate that it will run over that.  ~~Adz:Right~~

Areas bordering those affected by the interruptions may experience very brief outages as the system is reconfigured.”

Greaux said that the Basseterre area was not scheduled for any of the extended outages but interruption may be a possibility.

General Manager of the Electricity Department, John Channer apologized for the inconvenience that the interruptions would likely cause consumers and said that the project is near completion.

“The Government funded, two-year Protection Upgrade Project costs an estimated EC$3 million and involves the replacement of 30-year-old relays and circuit breakers. The antiquated relays have been the source of the ‘Cascading Effect’ that occurs when faults trip several generators off-line,” he said.

The GM revealed two other modifications being carried out under the project; the capability for automatic synchronization of electricity generators, reducing the timeframe required to bring a functional offline generator onto the grid and the installation of “Under-frequency Protection” that would automatically balance the system if there were loss of power, and prevent island-wide shutdown of the system.