CAY BAY— A major power outage on Wednesday morning at 5.50am was caused by an earth fault triggering emergency shutdown of several power generators at the Cay Bay Power Plant. The outage lasted more than an hour in some districts.GEBE technicians along with those from Power Generator Manufacturer Wartsila, managed to make the necessary adjustments to the power grid system and got the generators up and running again.
In the meantime, the two new 11.3 megawatt generators will be officially turned over to GEBE from the manufacturer around December 21 if all goes according to plan where performance testing is concerned.
Currently, during the performance testing phase, which will take approximately one week, the generator sensors and other technical systems will go through a series of tests to make sure the machines don't develop any mechanical problems.
Last Sunday the green light was given that all systems are good and that performance testing could begin.
During the performance testing phase, the two generators will run to full capacity for one week 24 hours per day. Wartsila engineers will be on hand to monitor this process assessing the performance of the engines before they are handed over for commercial operation.GEBE is looking forward to the handover, which would bring an end to the current period of challenges of frequent power outages due to mechanical problems and a shortage of capacity due to high demand for electricity.
GEBE once again apologizes for the inconvenience caused, however it is beyond the control of the company when these events take place, but every effort is being made to limit these events by having sufficient capacity.