BLACKOUT UNCERTAINTY - National outage raises questions about grid resilience, officials still without answers

Government officials and the top executive at Jamaica’s electricity distribution monopoly were still stumped yesterday as to why a series of “significant lightning activities” near critical power plants triggered a “cascading effect” that plunged the entire country into darkness for several hours on Friday into early Saturday.

Hugh Grant, CEO of the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo), acknowledged that a total collapse of the electricity grid “is not something we expect to happen.”

“The thing that we have to learn from right now is what transpired that caused this cascading effect whereby as a result of lightning strikes in one area of the grid, we have a cascading effect of generating outages across the grid,” he told journalists during a press conference at the company’s head offices in St Andrew.

JPSco is a private company which has an exclusive Government-issued licence to distribute electricity nationwide.

Grant said following the lightning strikes, the company saw evidence of damage to equipment at its sub-station in Rockfort, east Kingston, and evidence of a broken conductor on transmission lines connecting the Hunts Bay and Newport stations in St Andrew.

An “embarrassed” Energy Minister Daryl Vaz also wanted answers, insisting that what unfolded on Friday should not have happened.

“Something that started in Kingston ended up making its way all the way through to [the] western end of the island. The system should have been in a position where if one area went down, it should not have caused the entire system to go down,” he said while addressing the press conference.

“That’s the question that has to be answered. This for me, as minister, is an embarrassment,” Vaz added.

Jamaica has had six all-island system shutdowns since 2006, the last one coming in April 2016, he disclosed.

The energy minister said the all-island power outage was not only a national security concern, but could serious repercussions on Jamaica’s image internationally.

“When you hear about islandwide power cuts and you look at the countries that are associated with that, we are not there. We are the complete opposite, we are a prosperous growing economy,” he insisted.

The JPS CEO said the company started restoring electricity within an hour after the 9:02 p.m. all-island power outage and that the entire grid was restored by 6:30am Saturday.

Matthew Samuda, minister with responsibility for water, disclosed at approximately 65,000 National Water Commission customers were without the commodity up to 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Ansord Hewitt, director general of the Office of Utilities Regulation, said his agency has written to JPSCo requesting a preliminary report of what transpired.

The report is expected to be submitted by Monday, he said.

Hewitt revealed, too, that the regulatory framework requires JPSCo to provide an incident report in 30 days setting out what transpired.

“We will review it to see if it is adequate. We will also determine what directives, what actions to take coming out of that,” he said.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm,.com