“No relief from power bills – More expensive fuel to blame” – The Nassau Guardian 05.11.2018

Excerpt from this article; “Consumers who have seen their Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) bills spike in recent months might not get any relief for months as the electricity company continues to grapple with generation issues stemming from a fire that impacted two of the Clifton Pier power station’s largest engines in September.

Chairman of BPL Dr. Donovan Moxey said BPL is working on securing additional assets to compensate for the loss of those engines, but said that might not happen until next summer.

‘The spike in the cost of electricity is due to a number of factors,’ he said during a press conference on Friday at BPL’s Tucker Road headquarters.

‘First of all, we lost some critical assets at Clifton Pier, about 60 – 70 megawatts that was used to generate electricity for New Providence, given the fire that we had.

‘This particular generation assets were running on heavy fuel oil (HFO), which is the least expensive of the fuels that we use to generate electricity.’

‘We had to shift that load to Blue Hills (power plant).  Blue Hills runs on mostly on ADO, automotive diesel oil, which is much more expensive than HFO.’

‘So, when we lost those assets at Clifton and we had to shift our load to Blue Hills, we ended up utilizing the more expensive fuel, and right now our fuel mixture is 70 percent ADO, 30 percent HFO.’

‘So that’s what caused that inherent spike in the cost of electricity”

“The spike in cost of electricity is due to  number of factors”  and still waiting to hear which one these factors makes the public at large liable for the increased cost in the generation of power.

I had a calming down period to undergo as I experienced what could be described as a period of ‘rage and violence’ when I first read this article and the reasoning behind the increase in power costs and would like to first say that I find the actions by Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) and the government allowing it actually happen simply unconscionable; especially with the present state of the economy.

Indulge me in a simple analogy of this situation to highlight my position.

If I am own a car service and have an arrangement with a client to pick them up from a certain location and take them back there for a prearranged fee; I then cannot go demand compensation from them if my car has broken down and I have to rent another car to fulfill my obligations and this is exactly how I see the present situation with BPL.

How can they reasonably expect for the consumers to pay higher fates plus VAT due to mechanical issues that they have encountered?  These concerns are noted by me but really are not my financial concerns as I have already have an agreement with the power company to supply me power at a set rate.  The only way that I can reasonably engage the power company when considering a power rate increase would be if or when the price of fuel rises on the global market and we have already seen that they are NOT interested in this conversation because when oil prices fall, the rate of electricity still remains constant; well they have never done it to my recollection.

What I find seriously unjust about what is going on here is the fact that Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) has passed these costs onto  it consumers with the blessing of the Utilities Regulations & Competition Authority (URCA ) a state owned organization, instead of taking the lost of for faulty or malfunctioning equipment; it is fact that this now increases hardship on the average person who now is even more pressed when making the decision between lights and food and it also discourages economic growth as some employers will now be forced to cut back, not hire and even having some small businesses who are at this very time just breaking even to probably go out of business.

It is my opinion that this more by BPL only serves to negatively impact the country at large

END