Thousands without power after BELCO engines fail

SUNDAY, AUGUST 12: At 2:00 pm, Sunday, 12 August, approximately 4,000 customers across the Island remain without electricity, after two load sheds were triggered at BELCO’s Central Plant. 

Load was first shed this morning at approximately 9:30 am when one engine shut down. Power was restored to all of the 3,000 affected customers by approximately 11:00 am.  Subsequently, another major engine tripped just after noon, leaving about 8,000 customers without power.  About half had of these customers had power restored by approximately 1:30 pm. Power was restored to the remaining 4,000 customers by 3:05pm.

Today’s engine failures were due to unrelated mechanical problems.  In addition, today urgent repairs were being carried out on other engines, which meant that generating capacity was lower than normal.  In addition, load on BELCO’s system has been high for a Sunday, with demand at about 105 megawatts. 

BELCO is asking the community to conserve energy over the next 24 hours, as work continues to restore generating capacity in the Central Plant.