PHILIPSBURG--Residents in several districts were without electricity for varying parts of the day on Thursday as a result of load shedding by utilities company GEBE.
The company was forced to load shed after one of its larger engines went down around 3:00am on Thursday and another large engine went down later in the morning, Interim Manager at GEBE Andrew Zagers told The Daily Herald.
With two major engines down there was load shedding in several districts. The load shedding was discontinued late Thursday afternoon after one of the engines went back online. The second engine was scheduled to be up and running late yesterday as well.
Areas affected by load shedding were Cole Bay Lagoon, Lowlands, parts of Simpson Bay, Dutch Quarter, Pelican, Cay Bay, Belvedere, Madame Estate, Dawn Beach, Oyster Pond, Bush Road, Longwall Road, Over the Bank and Pointe Blanche.
The utilities company thanked the Westin St. Maarten Dawn Beach Resort and Spa and Princess Port de Plaisance and Casino PdP, which assisted by switching to their generators. A GEBE official said whenever the utilities company encounters issues where it has to resort to load shedding Westin and PdP are asked to switch to generator and this reduced the number of areas that GEBE has to load shed.
