Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
A preliminary investigation by the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) into the July 15 islandwide blackout has cast doubt on whether the Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd. (JPS) is capable of responding to another major outage crisis.
The electricity shutdown, which occurred when the JPS transmission line between Bogue, St. James, and Duncans, Trelawny, was struck by lightning at 4:16 p.m., lasted up to 12 hours in some areas. The lightning had caused a series of knock-on faults and the national grid collapsed following the failure of preventative measures.
Following JPS's own preliminary technical report, the OUR report, a response to the light and power company document, has asked 18 questions of the monopoly power provider and called for it to conduct a system stability study. The OUR, in its observations, has questioned whether JPS had a comprehensive systems restoration plan and staff trained to enact it.
"The indication is that there are weaknesses there and that we don't have any sight of plans for people to know what to do when a disaster occurs and that people are fully trained," Raymond Silvera, OUR deputy director general with responsibility for electricity, told The Gleaner yesterday.
Weaknesses
However, Mr. Silvera added that, according to the regulator's records, islandwide shutdowns occur on average every three years. Calling it a "wake-up call" for JPS, he said that, ironically, such incidents identify weaknesses in the system allowing them to be corrected.
"It shouldn't happen, but when you have a major exercise such as this, quite a few weak points show," he said.
However, he expressed optimism that, now that the weak links have been identified, JPS would work to correct them, or face penalties under the terms of their licence. He also said that, since the
incident, a number of lightning
strikes had hit the system and it has stood up.
A report from a group of Canadians, done after a probe into the blackout, is expected to be released on Monday after the regular Cabinet meeting.
