BELCO outage leaves 14,000 without power

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2: Thousands of islanders were left without electricity yesterday afternoon when two BELCO engines shut down.

The power cut affected 14,000 customers across the central, eastern and western parishes for less than an hour.

The two diesel engines in the East Power Station at BELCO’s Central Plant in Pembroke ‘tripped’ at just after 2pm.

Engineers were able to restore the power supply to all the properties affected by the outage by 2:50pm

A BELCO spokesperson said that an investigation into the cause of the power cut had begun.

She added: “We understand that a power cut like this can cause inconvenience and we apologise for that.

“But our engineers worked as quickly as they could to restore the power supply.

“BELCO has a total of 20 diesel and gas turbine engines in the Central Plant’s East and West Power Stations.

“The company serves approximately 35,800 customers.”