Technical fault cause of island-wide power outage

The St Vincent Electricity Services Limited (VINLEC) has apologized to its customers and the general public on mainland St Vincent for the interruption to the electricity supply that occurred on Saturday, August 22, between the hours of 12:01 a.m. and 3 a.m.{{more}}

The interruption was initiated by a technical fault that developed on its main generating unit at the Cane Hall Power Station, a release from Thornley Myers, chief executive officer of VINLEC said.

“The fault on the generating unit resulted in a shutdown of the engine and a subsequent shutdown of several other generating units on the power system. This created a power supply deficit and resulted in a complete system outage. The initial incident that triggered the collapse of the power system should not have created such an effect, and so the company is now engaged in an analysis to determine the root cause of this complete system shutdown,” the release said.

The company had not experienced such an incident since October 2013.

“Following the interruption of power at 12:01 a.m. the company’s technical staff moved expeditiously to restore the electricity supply, but in the process of so doing experienced some difficulties. As a result the first set of customers to receive electricity did so at approximately 12:55 a.m. and power was finally restored to all customers at 3 a.m.

“The company sincerely apologises to all customers and regret this incident that resulted in much inconvenience to its customers and the general public,” the release said.