The Canadian team investigating the islandwide power outage which plunged the country into darkness for nearly eight hours on July 15 has concurred, in part, with engineers from the Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd. (JPS) who said lighting strikes had triggered the blackout.
Days after the incident, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, seemingly dissatisfied with a preliminary report by the JPS, invited a team of Canadian experts to demystify what had caused the breakdown in electricity supply.
Findings
Information Minister Colin Campbell told journalists, at the weekly post-Cabinet press briefing yesterday, that the report from the the overseas experts was submitted to Cabinet yesterday but the findings would not be made public until the Government meets with the management of the JPS.
"The findings/observations and concerns which were presented to Cabinet, (five) will be discussed with the JPS. They (experts) have been instructed to continue their investigations as well as to be a part of the team that will be discussing these corrective actions with the Jamaica Public Service Company," Mr. Campbell added.
The consultants were asked to determine the cause of the islandwide power outage and to propose short-term measures to alleviate or rectify any fault on the JPS transmission or distribution system as well as to propose long-term corrective measures to prevent a recurrence of the power failure.
Between August 9 and 15, the consultants visited and inspected the power supply sub-stations and facilities linked to the blackout at the Bogue and Old Harbour sub-stations and the Jamaica Energy Partners-owned power facility at Old Harbour Bay in St. Catherine.
The JPS, in its investigation following the incident, reported that a number of weather-related problems, including lightning strikes on sections of the company's power system triggered the islandwide shutdown. It also pointed to a trip on the 69-kilovolt transmission line between its electricity generating plant in Bogue, St. James, and Duncans, Trelawny.
