Another major power cut; another explanation

The territory continues to be hit with wide-spread power outages – a contradiction of the government’s promise of far fewer outages when it commissioned three new Wartsila generators into service in May.

The latest major power cuts happened intermittently for virtually the entire afternoon yesterday, August 23.

That, like other recent outages, sent tongues wagging about the $50 million that taxpayers spent on the new generators to significantly improve generating capacity, and to break free of frequent load-shedding.

Deputy General Manager of BVIEC Henry Creque said the sporadic outages yesterday had nothing to do with the new generators.

He also explained what happened. “The outages were actually not caused by the generators. A surge was experienced on the system which caused a protective device to operate, and that operation resulted in all generating units but one being immediately disconnected from the grid.”

“We consider this to have been a mal-operation of the device and are investigating what was the source of the surge, the reason for the mal-operation, and what corrective actions will be taken,” Creque further told BVI News Online.