PHILIPSBURG--Utilities company GEBE seems to be battling one issue after the next to maintain a reliable supply of electricity.
Lights, air-conditioning units, televisions, computer systems and other electrically-powered equipment went off in households and businesses country-wide around 10:00am Tuesday.
GEBE said the total blackout was due to “issues with the water cooling system” for its engines that triggered a blackout in the entire Dutch St. Maarten. The last country-wide outage was just over 13 months ago.
Restoration originally was scheduled to start around 11:00am, but was pushed back to 11:30am. Priority areas such as St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) were restored first and other areas were restored during the course of the day. Restoration was completed around 2:49pm after technicians “worked diligently and remedied the problem,” which was necessary for all affected areas to receive electricity supplies, GEBE said in a press release issued late Tuesday.
A representative of the company said previous issues had been resolved and load-shedding had been set to be discontinued on Tuesday, when the problems with the cooling system were encountered.
In its release, GEBE said the outages that occurred on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were of a different nature.
“On Sunday and Monday there was load-shedding which lasted a maximum of 1½ hours per affected area. An island-wide outage is undetermined until we have the cause of the fault. Once this is located and restored, then NV GEBE is able to restart its generators and thereafter energise the cables.
“For this reason an island-wide outage can run you up to three to four hours before all areas are restored,” the company said in the release. “We do understand that this is an unacceptable situation; however, this was out of our control.”
GEBE apologized to customers for any inconveniences caused by this incident. Residents and businesses seem to be growing frustrated with the constant outages. Many persons expressed outrage at yet another outage yesterday, including venting their frustrations on social media websites such as Facebook.
