Thousands of Bahamians were enraged this weekend as they were inconvenienced by the Bahamas Electricity Corporation’s (BEC) island-wide blackout which began on Friday.

It is believed that millions of dollars were lost as businesses and families suffered financially.

The disruption in electricity supplies throughout New Providence and Paradise Island caused hotels, hosting hundreds of visitors, including American students on spring break, to suffer as generators malfunctioned.

Employees at Atlantis on Paradise Island reported that it that the hotel was without electricity for about six hours beginning at 6:30 p.m. Friday evening.

Affluent Bahamian residents, who own generators, spent considerable sums of money buying fuel as the disruption continued from Friday until yesterday night.

While there is no official estimate on the cost of the power outage to the general public, it is known that business throughout the island took a financial toll.

Some restaurants closed and along with hotels discarded food that became spoil because their refrigerators were unable to preserve the food as a result of the power outage.

At JCN-TV the blackout, which involved on and off electricity connections, caused electrical damage to a significant piece of television equipment which is now lost.

However, following the major blackout, BEC announced yesterday afternoon that the restoration of electricity throughout New Providence has been completed.

In a statement, BEC confirmed that electricity supplies were restored to the last five percent of affected customers at around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.

“BEC officials state that they have returned most generator units to service and have been able to restore electricity supply to New Providence and Paradise Island following Friday’s total system shutdown,” the statement read.

According to BEC officials, with the additional engines now in service there is sufficient capacity to meet customers’ demands.

BEC officials are also confident that they will be able to maintain a consistent supply of electricity going forward, barring any unforeseen challenges,

The statement explained that BEC crews will continue to work on other units to bring those back online, which will provide the additional capacity for reserve.

BEC thanks its customers for their patience throughout the past two days and assures that efforts will be made to prevent the likelihood of future outages of this magnitude and duration.

However, an investigation is underway to determine the cause of the fire which resulted in the island-wide black out last Friday.

According to reports, fire broke out on the electrical cables at BEC’s Blue Hills Power Station around 2 p.m. last Friday.

The fire led to a total system shutdown of both of BEC’s Blue Hills and Clifton Pier Power Stations.

With the assistance of The Royal Bahamas Police Force Fire Department, BEC crews were able to extinguish the fire.

Late Friday afternoon, BEC crews were gradually restarting units at the Clifton Pier Power Station in its effort to begin providing electricity to its customers.

On Saturday BEC provided and update stating that approximately 40 percent of customers in New Providence had their electricity supply restored and assured that crews were working trying to return additional engine units to service at both Clifton Pier and Blue Hills Power Stations.

On Sunday morning BEC provided another update stating that repairs were completed and three additional generator units were returned to service following the island wide power failure.
At that time electricity supply was restored approximately 95 percent of its New Providence and Paradise Island customers.