Faulty line caused today’s outage | Nothing of great concern

Authorities at the BVI Electricity Corporation (BVIEC) has said a ‘faulty transmission line’ was cause of consequtive power outages that affected all BVIEC-powered islands, except Anegada, this morning, July 17.

However, residents are being assured they have nothing to be concerned about.

The outages began about 5:55am. Power then began to return to sections of the territory by 6:30am, but was not fully restored until about 9:30am.

Explaining how the outages happened, BVIEC’s Deputy General Manager, Henry Creque told BVI News the aforementioned fault in their transmission line had ‘back-fed’ to the Henry Wilfred Smith Power Station in Pockwood Pond – causing the shut-down.

A total of 11 islands were impacted. These islands include Jost Van Dyke, Frenchman’s Cay, Little Thatch, Beef Island, Great Camanoe, Buck Island, Scrub Island, Marina Cay, Saba Rock, Tortola and Virgin Gorda.

Creque said Anegada was spared because it has an independent power station.

Line not yet repaired

Meanwhile, Creque said the defective line has been isolated but is not yet repaired.

“It (the line) is still off but our system is designed with such redundancies in place that we can work on it while the whole territory can be back up and running,” he said.

He further said the cost to repair the faulty line is likely to be adequately covered under the Corporation’s maintenance budget.

Creque then apologized for “any inconvenience” the Corporation might have caused customers.

Back in June,  General Manager for the BVIEC  Leroy Abraham said there were faults in the grid which was repaired in haste with old electricity distribution equipment.

His remarks had followed a similar outage which lasted for approximately one hour and a half.