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Belco: ‘Anomalies’ led to Saturday’s load shed

Systems operator Darin Mosley monitors the ligthing grid at Belco's operations centre control desk

Belco yesterday claimed it was able to satisfy the Island’s electricity demand this summer, despite recent outages that have left thousands of home without power.The company has “more than adequate capacity to meet expected load on the system this summer”, a spokeswoman said.She added that outages on Saturday and Monday “were unrelated to increased summertime electricity demand.”Belco is currently able to generate about 152 megawatts of electricity. This summer’s highest electricity demand has peaked at 110 megawatts.That figure is “well below plant capacity and approximately ten percent below 2011 and 2010 summertime peak loads,” the spokeswoman said.She said a series of faults caused several newer engines to shut down at the company’s East power station earlier in the week, sparking the power outages.The engine shutdowns led to a load shed, which forced certain circuits to be cut off to prevent a total system failure.Saturday’s load shed left almost 16,000 homes on the designated circuits without power for approximately two hours.The load shed circuits are changed regularly to avoid impacting the same customers repeatedly, according to the company’s spokeswoman.Circuits serving LF Wade International Airport, the Island’s hospital and the City of Hamilton are never included in the load shed rotation.Belco yesterday apologised to customers for any inconvenience caused.Said the spokeswoman: “Operations and engineering groups have identified some anomalies that coincided to cause this unusual outage and steps are being taken to address the issues.”