Dear Editor,
We take note of the concerns of the business community regarding the impact of power outages, particularly the one that took place on Saturday, March 30, 2013 -- which was the subject of the article "How much do blackouts cost business?" published on April 3 in the Business Observer.
The loss of business caused by an outage is truly regrettable. Like other businesses, JPS is negatively impacted because, when customers are out of power, the company is losing business as well. It is hardly in anyone's interest to have power outages.
While we are striving to improve system reliability by various means, it needs to be recognised that electricity, by its very nature, is interruptible. As we have seen in jurisdictions around the world, outages may occur for a variety of reasons, sometimes even to protect the power system itself. Power systems are designed with protection mechanisms that respond to problems on the system by isolating faults and sometimes causing temporary power outages. This helps to reduce the impact of the problem, as well as prevent wide-scale system damage.
In island states like Jamaica and Trinidad -- the latter had an all-island outage last week -- there is no opportunity for interconnectivity with other power delivery networks. As a result, outages will have a greater impact on customers than in countries like the US, for example. In the US, when the power company in one state loses power, due to a system fault, it can usually rely on backup from another state, so customers are often spared lengthy outages.
Importantly also, we must be mindful of the extremely capital-intensive nature of the energy business. One option to reducing the impact of outages would be to have a full backup power delivery network. This would be an additional cost burden that we are sure customers would not want. Last year, JPS invested US$56 million in capital expenditure to improve system integrity and supply reliability, and the company plans to spend more than US$60 million on infrastructure upgrades in 2013. In a struggling economy, increased levels of capital expenditure toward system upgrades will undoubtedly have unwelcome implications for customers.
Notwithstanding these challenges, JPS continues to make every effort to provide reliable, quality service. But when an outage does occur, the public can be assured that no one wants restoration faster than JPS.
NB: The report on the March 30 outage has now been submitted to the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), and JPS will be speaking with the media in the coming days to provide further information.
Winsome Callum
Head, Corporate Communications
Jamaica Public Service
Kingston 5
We take note of the concerns of the business community regarding the impact of power outages, particularly the one that took place on Saturday, March 30, 2013 -- which was the subject of the article "How much do blackouts cost business?" published on April 3 in the Business Observer.
The loss of business caused by an outage is truly regrettable. Like other businesses, JPS is negatively impacted because, when customers are out of power, the company is losing business as well. It is hardly in anyone's interest to have power outages.
While we are striving to improve system reliability by various means, it needs to be recognised that electricity, by its very nature, is interruptible. As we have seen in jurisdictions around the world, outages may occur for a variety of reasons, sometimes even to protect the power system itself. Power systems are designed with protection mechanisms that respond to problems on the system by isolating faults and sometimes causing temporary power outages. This helps to reduce the impact of the problem, as well as prevent wide-scale system damage.
In island states like Jamaica and Trinidad -- the latter had an all-island outage last week -- there is no opportunity for interconnectivity with other power delivery networks. As a result, outages will have a greater impact on customers than in countries like the US, for example. In the US, when the power company in one state loses power, due to a system fault, it can usually rely on backup from another state, so customers are often spared lengthy outages.
Importantly also, we must be mindful of the extremely capital-intensive nature of the energy business. One option to reducing the impact of outages would be to have a full backup power delivery network. This would be an additional cost burden that we are sure customers would not want. Last year, JPS invested US$56 million in capital expenditure to improve system integrity and supply reliability, and the company plans to spend more than US$60 million on infrastructure upgrades in 2013. In a struggling economy, increased levels of capital expenditure toward system upgrades will undoubtedly have unwelcome implications for customers.
Notwithstanding these challenges, JPS continues to make every effort to provide reliable, quality service. But when an outage does occur, the public can be assured that no one wants restoration faster than JPS.
NB: The report on the March 30 outage has now been submitted to the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), and JPS will be speaking with the media in the coming days to provide further information.
Winsome Callum
Head, Corporate Communications
Jamaica Public Service
Kingston 5