Caribbean Utilities Company experienced a customer load shortfall in electricity generation on Monday afternoon, CUC corporate communications manager Caren Thompson said.
‘This shortfall in generation is a direct result of generating units which are temporarily out of service for various reasons,’ she said.
Ms. Thompson said the problem was corrected shortly after it occurred.
However, had it continued, CUC intended to interrupt service to the eastern districts.
CUC was working on ways to prevent further disruptions.
‘We are working with large commercial customers who are able to reduce their consumption without significant impact to their operations,’ Ms. Thompson said.
Due to damage from Hurricane Ivan, CUC lost a large portion of its generating capacity.
In their 2005 year-end un-audited financial results report, CUC said it had recovered 87.65 MW of generating capacity as of 31 January.
A further 7.5 MW of capacity was scheduled to go on line in late May, and CUC has leased an additional 5.7 MW of capacity for six months to get through the peak summer-demand season.
These measures will bring CUC total generating capacity to 101 MW early this month, which should adequately handle the anticipated 2005 peak demand of 74 MW.
CUC has contracted for four new generating units, which will add an additional 16.8 MW of capacity, for installation by 15 December, 2005.
An 8.4 MW gas turbine has also been ordered for standby purposes.
The addition of the ordered generating units will bring CUC capacity to120 MW, just 3 MW less than before Ivan.
As far as load goes, CUC expects it will not return to its peak pre-Ivan load of 85 MW until the summer of 2006.
CUC chief operating officer Richard Hew said CUC would have enough generation next year to handle the load even with the additions of large new customers like The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman and other new developments that will go on line.
Mr. Hew said CUC would periodically review anticipated customer load to ensure it will have enough capacity.
Looking to the future, Mr. Hew said CUC had already taken steps to prevent such severe damage in the event of another hurricane.
‘All of the generation we lost were pre-Hurricane Gilbert,’ he said. ‘After that, we raised things above the flood plane. We didn’t want to build it the way we had it. We wanted to build it better.’
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