John Myers Jr., Staff Reporter

The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) is reportedly making significant progress in implementing directives from the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), arising from investigations into the circumstances which led to the islandwide power outage on July 15, 2006.

David Geddes, director of consumer and public affairs at the OUR, yesterday, said the utility company had submitted an updated report Monday evening in which it indicated that it had completed several steps including.

Regular updates

The JPS is required to submit regular updates on implementation of the directives given by the, utility regulator in light of an audit which revealed that it had failed to properly maintain its systems to prevent the islandwide blackout.

In addition to those measures, Winsome Callum, corporate communications manager at the JPS, told The Gleaner that the company was in the process of undertaking "system studies" to determine the critical fault clearing times (CFCT) on transmission lines and a revision of the protective relay settings.

She said a review of the under-frequency load shedding (UFLS) scheme was also being done, as well as, correcting the problems that caused the early tripping of generators operated by the JPS and IPPs.

Full back up

The company is also implementing a full back-up to its SCADA (system control and data acquisition) and communication system, a deficiency which the Canadian consultants, who were hired to investigate the power outage, highlighted in their report tabled in Parliament last week.

In the report, the consultants blamed the country's sole power supplier for not properly maintaining the protection mechanisms that were supposed to have reacted to the lightning strike at the Duncans substation and prevent the islandwide power outage. The failure of the protective mechanisms to react caused a total collapse of the system, the team noted in the report.

But the OUR has absolved the company of any breach of the guaranteed or overall operating standards. "I don't believe there was a breach of the overall standards, because the outage was precipitated by a lightning strike," J. Paul Morgan, director general of the OUR, said in recent interview.