A new $5.4 million state-of-the art nerve centre at Belco is set to improve power cut control, save the company millions and help to keep costs down for customers.

At the grand opening yesterday, president Garry Madeiros said the five-week old system had already proved itself during the recent severe lightning storm and through the Easter kite flying period.

The centre has merged energy production, supply and delivery and can monitor distribution down to each pole-mounted transformer feeding a single customer.

Mr. Madeiros said no one would lose their jobs after the merger but staff rationalisation through attrition would lead to savings as employees took on extra tasks.

He said cuts in electricity prices were not predicted, but the savings would help stop price rises.

"We have not had a rate increase for seven years," she said. "Because of this sort of improvement we have been able to stabilise costs."

Early trouble-shooting will lead to fewer outages causing a costly loss in sales, said Mr. Madeiros. "This new centre allows for improved system monitoring as everyone now has access to the same information producing greater cooperation and response.

"During and after a hurricane or any other emergency, this operations centre will be the hub for all restoration activities.

"This is a state-of-the-art facility which outshines many similar facilities in Europe and North America.

"We expect this integration of people and systems will produce annual savings of approximately $1 million per year after the first years of operation."

Core team leader John Blizman said the centre would help to identify outages quicker with a sophisticated computer which will analysis data from calls and assess whether it is a fault at a home or a transformer.

"It gives us the best estimate of where the source of the problem is."

A global positioning system will then alert the nearest truck and direct it to the glitch.

If the main diesel turbines fail computers will switch to back-up gas turbines within 30 seconds.