Half of Barbados Light and Power Company customers are now connected to an automated electricity grid, a shift it expects will sharply cut outage times and improve reliability, with some faults resolved in under two minutes, the company said Wednesday.
The announcement came at a press conference at the company’s Garrison headquarters, where officials outlined progress on the multi-million-dollar grid modernisation project, which began in 2016.
David Haynes, operations technology administrator, described the development as a major achievement not only for Barbados but for utilities across the Caribbean:
“This is a very unique milestone, especially not only for Barbados Light and Power, but for the utilities in the Caribbean, having more than half, 50 per cent of our grid modernised to a point where we can respond to faults in some instances in less than two minutes.”
David Haynes, Operations Technology Administrator, BL&P. (Photo Credit: Shamar Blunt)
He explained that before the introduction of automation, utility crews had to travel to outage locations, investigate faults, isolate the problem and then restore power – a process that could take at least an hour depending on the area affected.
“We’ve been able to reduce that significantly to, in some instances, less than 15 minutes,” he said.
Haynes noted that the company has been replacing manual disconnect systems with automated switches equipped with built-in algorithms capable of detecting and isolating faults while restoring service to unaffected customers almost immediately.
“In less than 30 seconds the fault has been isolated and the unaffected customers are restored,” he explained, adding that in some cases customers may not even notice a disruption in supply.
The technology also allows operators in the control room to pinpoint the exact location of faults, reducing the need for crews to inspect entire circuits before repairs can begin, he added.
Haynes said the automated system helps address transient outages caused by vegetation brushing against power lines.
“These switches detect those faults and are able to restore power to customers in a very short space of time,” he said.
Director of transmission and distribution Dr Nneka Archer stressed that the investment was not concentrated solely in urban or tourism-heavy districts.
“Most of the time people think when we make investments into modernisation, we go into the town areas, we go on the west coast. We started in the rural feeders,” Dr Archer said, noting that those areas often serve long distribution lines with large customer populations.
Light & Power first introduced customers to automation in 2019 and has since expanded the programme to more than 70 000 customers across all parishes.
To date, the company has installed 61 automated switches at a cost of approximately $5m.
“At the end of the investment we will have 81 per cent,” Archer said, explaining that the remaining 19 per cent of customers are connected to underground networks or smaller feeders that require different solutions.
(SB)
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