An early morning power outage at the Fairmont Southampton failed to derail a major insurance conference yesterday.

Power was cut to most of the hotel at about 4.15 a.m., when a transformer malfunctioned. One guest said he had heard a series of explosions. Electricity was off for seven hours, and was restored at around 11 a.m.

Early reports suggested that a sub-station in Southampton had lost power, and when it was restored, the surge damaged the transformer.

Belco staff who first arrived at the hotel needed extra tools, several members of the hotel staff said, and so had returned to Hamilton to properly equip themselves.

The hotel has some emergency back-up generator power, but not enough to provide light and air conditioning to the entire building.

Faced with uncertainty as to when the power might be restored, organisers of second annual Bermuda Captive Conference opted to stick to the schedule, which meant a sticky start to the day for the more than 200 attendees who had registered for the first morning?s sessions.

?We have people who have flown in from as far afield as Ireland and California,? said Mike Hardy, the conference coordinator. ?We couldn?t reschedule for next week, or even for this afternoon, so we decided to press ahead. The hotel was very helpful.?

Thanks to the conference, the Fairmont was almost full, and management moved swiftly to reassure guests that everything was being done to return matters to normal.

Free breakfast and lunch was laid on for all guests of the hotel, and room rates were reduced by $100 for the night.

Premier Alex Scott was the first speaker of the day, at 10 a.m. He opened his comments with a humorous remark about how his welcome had chilled somewhat ?when they realised I wasn?t the man with the power? that people had been hoping for.

Speaking to after concluding his comments, Premier Scott regretted the outage, but said: ?There is good news for the future. Belco and Fairmont are working on a self-generating plant for the hotel, larger than the existing small facility, so that this sort of thing would not happen in the future.?

Asked if he thought Belco was doing a good job for the Island, the Premier said: ?Belco is a good corporate citizen,? he said.

?The times, they are a?changing, and Belco is looking for ways to serve Bermuda. The Island is growing dramatically and demands on Belco are significant. As a consequence of last year?s (fire at Belco?s generating plant), we are on the point of establishing a Commission, which Belco supports and the Governor has endorsed.?

The point of the Commission would not be to point the finger or assign blame, the Premier said, but to ensure that Bermuda does not find itself in ?that place? again.

?Out of the Commission, we will be able to come up with an energy policy, with suitable redundancies to ensure that if part of the electricity supply is compromised, support would enable the power to keep flowing,? Mr. Scott said.

?In fact, Belco is talking to the Department of Works and Engineering about the generation of power at Tynes Bay, which would provide another stream to allow us to increase the supply of energy by burning waste,? the Premier said. ?It?s called ?wheeling?. Government would be able to sell power to Belco. How it is distributed may provide another redundancy for us. We are learning from past experience.?

Hotel manager Allan Trew said the hotel?s 600 guests had taken the hiccup in good spirits despite losing air conditioning to their rooms.

Belco spokeswoman Linda Smith Wilson said a cable fault between the Southampton Princess and the substation was to blame.