Equipment failure behind major power cut

| 16/01/2018 | 33 Comments

(CNS): The power outage on Friday morning, which impacted 14,337 CUC customers from South Sound to East End, was caused by equipment failure, Grand Cayman’s electricity provider said Tuesday. Apologizing for the cut in supply that affected more than half their customers between 7:20am and 8:27am, CUC said in a release that the interruptions to service happened within the transmission loop feeding the Eastern Districts during scheduled maintenance and upgrades of the back-up section of the transmission loop.

This equipment failure affected the company’s South Sound, Prospect, Bodden Town and Frank
Sound Substations, leading to the widespread outage, CUC stated.

 

 

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Tags: ,

Category: Local News, Utilities

Comments (33)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. Anonymous says:

    Over half of CUC’s employees are Lodge brothers, and the head of the new OfReg is a big Lodge brother. Any connections, do you think?

    2
    4
  2. Anonymous says:

    Just curious did they ever install them hi-tech generators they bought? Please don’t tell me they failing already ?FYI another cold front on the way yipeee so happy my bill should be less again…But knowing CUC they will find away to pop it off in us again..SAD BUT TRUE

    3
    1
  3. Anonymous says:

    CUC – Details, please. Your explanation is as good as no explanation at all.

  4. Anonymous says:

    As an expat, and former power station reliability engineer, I find it staggering how unreliable the CUC systems are, and how dependent the island is on diesel.

    My hope is that the planned shift away from diesel generation includes a plan to diversify supply, and will allow multiple suppliers (or even better, a single company majority owned by CIG, similar to EDF in France)

    17
    5
  5. Anonymous says:

    What about the power cut on Saturday morning too!

    10
  6. Anonymous says:

    Another opportunity to purchase new equipment to bolster assets. Any bets they’ll be another call for rate increases this year. And for every rate increase the shareholders are satisfied. I wish I had a licence to print money too. Do these clowns still get a 15% guaranteed profit on net assets?

    Shareholders need not comment on this as it’s a guaranteed thumbs down.

    22
    4
    • Anonymous says:

      Time to go to steam, you have alot of caymanians who sailed on steam ships.

      5
      2
      • Anonymous says:

        What do you propose to burn as fuel to make the steam ? Steam was phased out for a reason , it had to do with quantity of the fuel burning to create the steam. Only possibility locally would be land-fill waste & refuse incineration , might work to create steam turbine power. I believe it has been looked at .

        1
        2
    • Anonymous says:

      It has been a few years since CUC had that guaranteed profit on assets. I am a very minor shareholder; nothing stopping you from being one too.

      6
      2
      • Anonymous says:

        Suck it up if that’s the BS they feed you. You’re happy with the dividends that’s all you care about it seems.

        2
        1
  7. Anonymous says:

    ATTN CUC!!!! – TOP TIP!!! DO NOT schedule ‘maintenance’ during the times that your customers are getting their children ready for school, getting themselves ready for work or preparing a holiday dinner!!!!
    Do you realize that these are the times they have their equipment failures????
    I can’t even think of a name bad enough to call this thoughtlessness. Why on earth would you schedule maintenance during this time???? Seriously?
    Someone somewhere is saying to themselves “that person has a valid point. We’re a thoughtless group of people. You’d think we would consider the time of day when we MAY accidentally cut power”

    17
    5
    • Anonymous says:

      Maybe you should attend school with your children. I think reading & comprehension is still mandatory. The maintenance was happening on the back-up line as stated. So it could not activate when the in-service line had a problem. Yes it was bad but no one can predict failures and maintenance has to happen and may take several days.

      4
      1
  8. Anonymous says:

    Still burning diesel fuel , when the wind has been blowing 25 mph since Christmas eve. A dozen wind turbines would augment the power grid so that less wear & tear is inflicted on the diesel generators, then in weeks of low ( or no..) wind , fire up the B&W & the Cats.
    Obviously , much better to totally depend on & be hostages of fossil fuel?

    17
    2
  9. Anonymous says:

    Whenever people highlight CUC’s price gouging, they suffer an “equipment failure”.

    22
    3
  10. JTB says:

    “Apologising, but not offering any rebate to customers affected….”

    24
    4
    • Anonymous says:

      CUC does not charge for “service” . They charge for electricity used, so aside for a tiny portion of a monthly meter rental charge, why would you expect a rebate for electricity not provided and not billed for?

      8
      6
      • JTB says:

        CUC provides an electricity supply, a service for which government allows them a monopoly. Get your facts right.

        5
        1
        • Anonymous says:

          That fact does not preclude the fact that if they do not supply electricity to your house for you to use, they do not get paid for it. So any “rebate” would simply be for inconvenience. Do you know anywhere in the world where that happens?

          3
          1
          • Anonymous says:

            He’s right, maybe your are confused with your cable provided. In that case you pay a flat rate whether it’s working or not. Sadly they don’t give you anything when the service is out either.

  11. Natty Dread says:

    The price we pay for electricity this is both shameful and a disgrace! End the Monopoly Cayman end the Monopoly. tell the PPM to hand back their political stipend the got.

    24
    3
    • Anonymous says:

      too many big families own too much of CUC to let CUC have competition.

      3 mini nukes which are low grade uranium (means harmless to environment if they leaked) at 2 mil a piece would power 60K homes at 10 cents a kilowatt hour. And they aren’t much bigger than a hot tub. And are sealed in cement.

      But we won’t be getting those and that 10 cents a kilowatt hour, because too many people are invested into CUC.

      CUC is not going anywhere. Solar? it’s controlled by CUC. So is ANY other power generation.

      Core program should just be called the “control” program. All the Core program does is limit the amount of electricity each home can generate. So CUC will always make profit.

      7
      5
      • Anonymous says:

        They dont own the production of Elon Musks wall batteries and they do not own solar, which means they are not the future. They may try to cut-in on the business, but those items are from the US and can be operated without CUC’s help.

  12. Anonymous says:

    An equipment failure? Staggering! Thank god they explained that otherwise we’d never have known.

    Any indication if it was a mere coincidence that it happened whilst CUC were working on it? It’s just that that sounds like someone at CUC’s actions may have “caused” the equipment failure.

    If so should the headline not read: “CUC Failure Behind Major Power Cut”?

    16
    2
  13. Anonymous says:

    and what compensation are CUC offering for this failure?

    14
    3
  14. Anonymous says:

    More like management failure to maintain equipment

    21
    2
    • Anonymous says:

      The explanation is meaningless without attaching CUCs published report.

      11
    • Anonymous says:

      Have you ever seen CUC’s compound? There’s an awful lot of equipment and this is after all a Caribbean island. They do their best and their best is good enough for us to have the highest standard of living in the region.

      8
      15

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.