SMN News also learnt that the two new generators were tripping or shutting down due to safety procedures when the short circuit occurs. While there has been conflicting information, circulating this media house also learnt that one of the radiators from one of the new generators blew on Saturday night as one of the employees had reported that he heard some sort of loud noise coming from the power plant.
Several residents and long time employees of GEBE said that the managing director of GEBE Mr. William Brooks needs to get his act together and manage the company in the interest of the people. "The building that was at the Bellevue border was damaged since 2008 when someone ran into it during a traffic accident and to date GEBE has not seen the importance of this building to have it repaired." One angry employee said that the main purpose of that building was for the Dutch side to receive a feed from the French side in cases of emergencies and vise versa but since the building was damaged that feed was blocked. "If that building was repaired and the feed was open then Cole Bay would not have been in darkness during those five hours."
SMN News also learnt that GEBE has been working all its generators at full capacity and there is no room for incidents such as Sunday's.
The source said GEBE management is not taking the businesses that are constantly losing monies to GEBE's power failures into account.
A press release from GEBE late Sunday night states that a short in one of two feeder cables leading to the Zagersgut Substation triggered a complete blackout on the Dutch side of the island late Sunday afternoon. The emergency protection systems at the Cay Bay Power Plant were triggered completely shutting down the power plant for a number of hours Sunday evening.
A GEBE team of technicians have been busy Sunday evening working to isolate the short in the feeder cable, however without success up to press time. Unfortunately, this left a number of districts without power such as Dutch Quarter, Belvedere, Oyster Pond, Defiance, Middle Region and Guana Bay, but GEBE engineers were able to bring those areas back online by approximately 10.30pm after re-routing the electrical production supply.
The demand in those aforementioned areas on Sunday night is low and technicians will continue to look for the fault and implement immediate repairs on Monday morning. The re-routing of Sunday evening is only a temporary measure. Once the short has been located load shedding of the aforementioned areas will be necessary in order to repair the problem.
Electricity supply to other residential districts were back online after power plant technicians were able to re-route power to the last Zagersgut Substation cable, however the cable can only carry a certain load. Numerous attempts were made to resupply the various districts, but the fault kept creating a destabilizing situation.
Cay Bay Power Plant engineers were taken aback by the island-wide (Dutch side) outage and said it was rather unusual. All power generating equipment are functional and operational including the two new generators that were inaugurated last Friday.
Shorts in the power generation system are not uncommon and can happen anytime without warning.
GEBE continues to make investments in the electrical supply system in order to provide a reliable system. The current Bush Road civil works is related to GEBE's ring system that will connect to the Pond Island Substation once completed.
The ring system will allow GEBE to still be able to provide electricity to Philipsburg and surrounding environs should a fault develop in the distribution network. GEBE engineers would be able to re-route the electricity more quickly thereby limiting the disruption time in service.
