Rolling power cuts of up to fours hours in duration are expected over the weekend and into next week as Belco strives to get Hamilton back online for the start of business on Monday.

At a Press conference to provide a progress report yesterday afternoon, Belco CEO Garry Madeiros asked for patience as his staff work around the clock to bring the power plant?s energy distribution system back to some semblance of normality after Thursday?s catastrophic accident.

Exactly when Bermuda?s electrical system will be fully operational once again is still far from certain, with a noticeably cautious Mr. Madeiros saying only that he was ?hopeful? the Island would be fully served by next Friday ? ?or perhaps before?.

However, electricity conservation continued to be the theme most enthusiastically stressed.

A fully operational Belco can produce a maximum of 165 megawatts of electricity, Mr. Madeiros revealed, with the current production level sitting at 85 megawatts.

?Our usual demand for this time of year is closer to 110 megawatts so obviously there is a considerable gap,? he said. ?Now we have the capacity to fill that gap ? our plant is still working well and was not effected by the traumatic experience we had in the switching room.

?But we are finding we have to reengineer ways to get at that capacity. What we can say at this stage is that Hamilton will be completely on by 8 a.m on Monday morning. That has been a priority shift.

?It is imperative for the benefit of this Island to have the city operational. But a lot of things have to transpire between now and then and lot of things that have to be explained to the public.?

Faced with the task of bringing the city back online with only 85 megawatts of electricity at Belco?s disposal, residential homes will have to have power periodically removed.

Some restaurants in Hamilton will have power restored by today, Mr. Madeiros added, while ?priority customers? such as hotels, guesthouses and groceries stores will not be affected by the planned cuts, as well as the Airport, Hospital and all emergency services.

Government offices were closed yesterday ? a fact which precluded the Department of Prosecutions from tending to its morning obligations in Magistrates? Court which was open. The Supreme Court?s doors were firmly closed however.

Meanwhile, according to Belco?s chief operations manager Vince Ingham, no progress has yet been made on a more detailed investigation into the cause of the fire, as the company?s focus remains on satisfying the Island?s energy needs.

An insurance expert did inspect the site yesterday morning, however, and Belco has been granted permission to tear the building down.

Only at that stage, Mr. Ingham concluded, will they be able to clean up the area properly to learn more about what transpired.

The failure of one of the safety switches to deal with a fault in one of the plant?s five transmission boards ? which resulted in a massive build up of energy behind the blockage ? is still the Belco engineers? best guess however.

The damage to the transmission board and the building in which it is housed is severe, with the cost of replacing the entire structure estimated at close to $10 million.

Overseas assistance has also been sought for advice on the plant?s malfunctioning gas turbines, which Mr. Ingham conceded had been giving his staff ?some problems?.

But despite the challenge, Belco will be doing all that it can to improve their operating capacity over the next few days, Mr. Madeiros concluded, while adding that only a ?catastrophic failure? in one of their diesel engines would undermine the attempts to power up the city.

?We are trying to sure that everybody is treated equitably,? he said. ?But again there are no guarantees. This is a science and we cannot plan for every abnormality we come across. We will take it one step at a time.

?But the important thing for the community to understand is that the rolling outages are being done in a controlled manner. If your lights go out, they will come on again approximately four hours later. That is the plan.

?This will improve as our engineering group provides us with access to that extra capacity. I cannot say right now when that will be but we have some ideas of what we think the targets could be.

Mr. Madeiros concluded: ?Right now we would say that we are hopeful this will be finished by next Friday although it could be sooner as our ability to restore improves. I thank the public for their continued understanding and support.?