Electricity consumers here are breathing a sigh of relief upon receiving news that the load shedding schedule that was in place for the past week has been discounted.
Very early in the report was that “the island will have to endure more load shedding possibly going in to the weekend.” That it did. But then, “the owners engineer arrived on site this morning and he had a look at the rental unit that we’ve got that was currently down.”
As of just about mid-day, today, the latest Montserrat Utilities Limited (MUL) update although with some caution, came the news that after several small repairs the main rented generator was back in service and load shedding would cease, “for the moment,” according to MUL’s manager.
The question left is whether this will last and for how long that will have to be so, as the island’s residents and business owners begin to calculate their losses that have come from one event to another and many. This, following the load shedding schedule that had been put in place over the past two weeks because of issues with the rental generator which severely restricted the electrical division of Montserrat Utilities Limited – MUL’s ability to provide the island with continuous power supply.
On Wednesday, the report was that the technician from RIMCO Puerto Rico, responsible for undertaking repairs to the rental generator at the Brades power station did not arrive delaying the repairs yet again. The RIMCO technician was originally scheduled to arrive here on Tuesday.
The managing director of MUL, David Thompson who must have been interviewed more times in the past few weeks than he had over his entire tour of duty in Montserrat so far said, “The situation as it is now lunch time on Wednesday we found out from RIMCO that they weren’t able to send the technician we were expecting today. They have said they will send him tomorrow so we have to stick with the load shedding planned for Wednesday obviously Thursday probably Friday as well. And we’ll find out more news about the repairs sometime on Friday and as soon as we know anything we’ll let the public know.”
The MUL manager David Thompson as far as he could go was right as on Friday, he filed this report with ZJB Radio. “You probably know from earlier news broadcast that the owners engineer arrived on site this morning and he had a look at the rental unit that we’ve got that was currently down. He found a number of small issues,” and these he said were resolved.
Giving his best news for two weeks he informed further. “So, just slightly after one o’clock this afternoon we were able to put the whole of the island back on power… So no more load shedding for the moment.”
But Thompson has learnt to be safe in caution. “I am sorry to be hesitant about this but you know the way these things worked in the past. The rental unit is still under test, the repairs are being carried out and appear to be holding and we’ll test it overnight and we’ll test it through tomorrow as well,” expressing hope for the present. “At the moment we have no more plans for load shedding.”
The manager explained that from tomorrow morning (Saturday) they will be looking at one of the other generators, “to see if we can take it offline and do some more, I would call minor repairs.” But then comes another caution. “No repair on a generator is really that minor to see if we can get that boosted in its delivery as well.”
He hoped, “that we’re holding good for the weekend and for a good few days after that.”
That next few days is the time he is hoping that the engineer from Anglo Belgian Corporation who is scheduled to arrive on island Saturday with the part needed for the testing and the commissioning of the new power station, will in fact do so and the 13-year in coming new generating plant will spring into running operation of electricity supply.
The week ends with the anticipated hope, with the island at this point wary of the shedding and outages, still nervous, as they want to hear when they can expect uninterrupted power supply. Could that be the case as it is still not certain that early march could not be mid to late March, at this point if ever.
