Utility Regulator in Jamaica Orders Report on Blackout as Power Restored Nationwide
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Electricity has been restored to all customers affected by Friday night’s islandwide blackout, but tens of thousands of National Water Commission (NWC) customers remained without water on Saturday as authorities investigated the cause of the outage and worked to restore service in several parishes.
The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) said all customers impacted by Friday night’s outage had their service restored by 6:30 a.m. on Saturday after crews worked through the night to restart generating units and re-energise the electricity network.
The utility said its Incident Command System remains active as teams continue to monitor the network to ensure stability and investigate the cause of the outage. It added that crews are also addressing small pockets of outages unrelated to the islandwide blackout.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Water and Environment said the 65,000 customers without water represent approximately 12 per cent of the NWC’s customer base.
The ministry said assessments confirmed that major treatment plants and pumping stations were back online. However, full restoration in some communities was being delayed by electrical outages affecting facilities in Clarendon, St Elizabeth and St James.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Energy Minister Daryl Vaz at JPS headquarters on Saturday, Water and Environment Minister Matthew Samuda said, “while primary production facilities are rebounding quickly, our immediate priority is maintaining backup power systems and mobilising localised maintenance support to safely restart other systems and rebuild critical storage capacity in the lagging parishes.”
The ministry said NWC technical teams were working in collaboration with JPS to restore water supply to affected communities and return impacted pumping systems to normal operation.
The outage has also prompted scrutiny from the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), which has requested a preliminary report from JPS by Monday.
According to the regulator, the report must include the sequence of events leading to the outage, contributing factors, the nature and impact of the disruption on the generation, transmission and distribution systems, and its effect on electricity supply to customers.
The OUR has also requested information on immediate corrective measures being implemented to minimise the likelihood of a recurrence.
The preliminary submission will be followed by a more detailed report that JPS is required to provide within 30 days of the restoration of power under the Electricity Act.
JPS President and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant said the company was investigating what appeared to be a cascading shutdown effect triggered by lightning strikes.
“We lost five of our transmission lines emanating from one of our significant substations in the corporate area. In parallel with that, we had a cascading effect, causing a loss of generation across the entire island. This cascading effect resulted in a shutdown of the entire grid,” Grant said.
He said the company had not anticipated such an outcome from lightning strikes affecting one section of the network.
Grant said backup systems functioned as expected, allowing operators to manually restart generating units and begin restoring service within an hour of the outage.
“At this stage, we’ll transition into the investigatory phase to understand exactly what transpired, capture the learnings from that, and then, more importantly, have the follow-up action, so we can reduce the likelihood of any reoccurrence,” he said.
