The CEO of Vinlec Vaughn Lewis stated on Tuesday that the island power grid sustained significant damage and that all customers should have power restored in two weeks.
Summary of Power Issues on Mainland
There are a lot of low-voltage lines down and a lot of trees that have come down and damaged the network. The good thing is that we are not seeing catastrophic damage. But it’s going to be a tedious exercise because, as in Bequia, we will need to disconnect lines or branch lines from our main lines and transformers to customers as we energise these main lines.
The priorities are to make sure we get power back into the capital, Kingstown. And we will be working today to make sure we get power to areas like the gas stations, the main supermarkets, and as many of the main lines as we can get up as much as possible.
We will be disconnecting areas that are suspect and trying to get these main lines back up. I am hopeful, but I can’t commit to that. By the end of the week, we will have more than 50% of the population on mainland Saint Vincent back up and hopefully all the main lines; it could be more, but again, it depends on what we experience when we go into the various areas.
And we are also hopeful that the weather system that will be passing through tomorrow won’t hamper us too significantly.
I met with my engineers and linemen this morning. They had a plan in place already. We have modified it slightly based on what we saw yesterday to identify the priority areas and focus on those. So today we are going to try to make sure we get back to areas like the gas stations and the main supermarkets.
I’ve also contacted the telecommunication companies, and we have received a list of priority areas from Digicel and will shortly receive a list of priority areas from Flow because while they are running on generators, generators will not last forever, and we don’t want a compounded problem of lack of electricity and lack of communication.
We should be able to have the entire country back online, hopefully with our customers who are available to have power within two weeks. That’s not a promise; that’s just an estimate. And as we go along, we will be updating the nation as much as possible.
Our preliminary assessment is that we should be able to deal with what we see on the mainland and on the island of Bequia.
Article to be updated.
