- St Vincent Island-Wide Outages Caused by Switchgear Insulation Failure
CEO of VINLEC, Vaughn Lewis, expressed optimism on Sunday while speaking on the Issue at Hand Programme that there won’t be any more island-wide blackouts as the company plans to implement ‘enhanced inspection protocols’ following two consecutive blackouts.
An insulation failure on the 33 KV switchgear at Lowmans Bay was the cause of the blackout that happened on June 9. This is the first time that VINLEC has had a flashover and insulator failure on a switch gear that hasn’t been in a flood.
Lewis stated that until the last component of the switchgear is fixed by the suppliers, there should be a high degree of dependability once VINLEC returns the repaired side of the equipment to service.
“The 33 KV system connects all of the company’s power plants, and the units at the Lowman Bay Power Plant are all operational. The system failure occurred last week due to a malfunction in a section of the switchgear that directly connected Cane Hall to Lowmans. VINLEC was able to reconnect all of its networks via a different switchgear side after isolating the malfunctioning component”.
“VINLEC would have to implement a system where we inspect, isolate and check the bus bar more frequently than we do our other switchgear in the wake of last week’s disaster. There used to be several annual system failures when I started working at VINLEC. They now have them, maybe every 2.5 years on average, for a variety of causes, some unanticipated like last week”, Lewis stated.
Press Release Below
Today, 9th June, 2024, a service interruption affected all VINLEC customers on mainland St. Vincent. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Restoration efforts were initiated immediately, and power was successfully restored to the entire island within two hours.
We recognize that the outages experienced today, 9th June, and last week, 2nd June, were caused by an insulation failure on VINLEC’s 33kV switchgear at the Lowmans Bay Power Plant. Despite these challenges, our system’s built-in redundancies allowed us to isolate the affected area on the switchgear, ensuring the continuity of island-wide operations.
This morning’s island-wide outage was specifically triggered by a switching procedure related to internal repairs to a section of the switchgear. We are currently awaiting parts from our suppliers to complete other aspects of the repairs.
It is important to note that this is the first time VINLEC has encountered an insulation failure with one of our switchgears that is unrelated to external factors like floods. Switchgears are the backbone of our electrical network, and we assure all customers that resolving this issue is our top priority.
VINLEC’s dedicated teams continue to work on restoring any lost redundancies, and we are committed to maintaining a stable electricity supply to all customers until the final repairs of the switchgear are completed. We deeply appreciate the patience and understanding shown by our customers as we work to resolve this matter promptly.
