NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (October 01, 2019) — The following is an announcement from the Nevis Electricity Company Limited (NEVLEC) regarding an emergency power outage on September 30. 2019, which affected consumer’s services by the Cotton Ground Feeder.

Over the last few months NEVLEC has been undertaking very extensive refurbishing works on its diesel engines (generators) in order to improve efficiency and reliability.

The refurbishing work on its two largest engines has been completed. They are however not able to supply the entire country. As a result, similar work is ongoing on the smaller much older engines in order to allow them to carry more load and to improve their reliability.

Work was recently completed on engine number 6 and it was under test when it tripped at 7:04 pm.

The trip of an engine results in load having to be shed automatically in order to bring the system back into balance. If this is not done the remaining engines would trip on overload resulting in an island wide black out. The trip of engine number 6 resulted in the shedding of the Cotton Ground Feeder which feeds our customers from Prospect to Liburd Hill.

Prompt action was taken by NEVLEC’s operations personnel to bring on another small engine, and to restore power to the Cotton Ground Feeder at 7:32 p.m.

NEVLEC wishes to apologize to its valued customers for the inconvenience caused. We assure you that our efforts are geared towards a sustained significant improvement in reliability.