VINLEC says that the power outage that left the whole of St. Vincent in darkness Thursday morning was cause by a fault linked to an air compressor at its main generation plant.
In a statement, Thursday afternoon, the company said that power has been safely restored to all customers affected by the outage.
“The outage, which affected all customers on mainland St. Vincent, occurred at approximately 4:35 a.m.”
The company said its preliminary investigations have revealed that the outage was triggered by a fault linked to an air compressor at the Lowmans Power Station.
This ultimately caused two of the generators at the plant to trip.
“Once the fault was identified, the technical and operations teams commenced work to restore the electricity supply. Work commenced at 5:14 a.m. and power was gradually restored to affected areas within three hours,” VINLEC said.
“In instances of extended outages, the company utilises a systematic approach to bringing the system back online to ensure there are no further challenges on the network. Supply to all customers was restored at 6:55 a.m.
“As customary, our engineering team will carry out a thorough investigation of the incident to determine the root cause, with a view to minimise the probability of this occurrence.
“The company continues to work to provide a safe and reliable supply to customers. VINLEC regrets the inconvenience caused,” VINLEC said.
We always have to investigate if it was politically instigated. Was there anything that should have happened on Thursday morning, court case, radio show? It is strange that this equipment failure happened starting in a period or at a time of low generation.