A dominoes-like shutdown caused a capacity overload on electricity generators Tuesday after a communication failure at the North Sound plant, the Caribbean Utilities Company said.
Pat Bynoe-Clarke, CUC corporate communications manager, said the sudden shutdown of the one unit caused an overload on the other generating units, some of which also shut down and exacerbated the issue.
“CUC’s peak demand is driven by air-conditioning use which is heaviest during the hot summer days and evenings,” Ms. Bynoe-Clarke said. “The summer peak demand is approaching 100 MW, whereas during the winter is in the low 80s.”
The rotating power outages affected more than 5,500 residents in the Savannah area, parts of George Town, West Bay Road and North Side between just after 11:30 a.m. and close to 2 p.m.
Each outage was less than an hour long.
“From time to time we will have a generating unit trip offline during peak period and there is disruption in service until that lost generation is restored or other generating units can be started. Yesterday [Tuesday] was a little more complicated as we lost multiple units,” Ms. Bynoe-Clarke said.
“Among those tripping off were the small temporary mobile units in place to substitute for the 36 MW of large capacity units that the company sought to have in place by June 2014 under the failed 2012 competitive bid process.”
Ms. Bynoe-Clarke said CUC did not anticipate further outages related to the issue.
The company’s reliability service measured by the Average Service Availability Index was 99.99 percent.
“This means that for the first half of 2014, CUC’s customers experienced just under an hour power outage.”
Related Videos
And I could have sworn I had turned off my little four inch blade fan……….
And we say Power cut again CUC gives good service and high electricity bills in comparison to some other places, because I have lived in countries just in our back door where electricity is shut down religiously every day for three to five hours, but my light bill with air-condition did not go over five dollars for the month. Sometimes it is frustrating, we have to settle with the evil we know.