Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) officials say
technical teams Thursday morning completed full restoration of power supply to
about 570,000 customers following Wednesday evening's all island power outage.
Corporate Communications Manager at JPS, Winsome Callum says the restoration exercise ended just under two hours ago.
Ms. Callum says the restoration work started within a few minutes of the system failure, with special emphasis on the communities closest to the Kingston and Montego Bay power generation centres.
Speaking on RJR's Newsline Seven Thursday morning, Miss Callum says the company does not expect a repeat of Wednesday night's catastrophe.
"Something like what happened last night, you never have that two days in a row. The system is fairly stable now but in terms of what caused the all island blackout last night there are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed and we are working to address those," said Ms. Callum.
"We cannot say with any surety that something like this will never happen again but I can give you the assurance that the problem was addressed last night and we are not expecting any disruptions today because of last night's problem,"
Miss Callum said investigations into the system failure continue.
She noted that the company had implemented several recommendations following a similar unscheduled power outage in 2006.
But she admitted that more needs to be done.
"The blackouts were caused by different elements of the system but the bottom line is that after the last major outage we had a report in which a number of recommendations came out. The recommendations were for some short term, medium term and long term action to be taken. We have taken all the short term measures, we have made all those adjustments to the system but for the longer term recommendations not all of those have yet been implemented," she continued.
Wednesday night, chaos reigned at major thoroughfares as angry motorists painstakingly negotiated traffic intersections.
In Montego Bay and other major towns it was a similar situation.
The Operations Arm of the Police High Command deployed police personnel to major traffic hubs in an effort to minimise any confrontations and to free the gridlock.
And Energy Minister Clive Mullings is to chair a press conference this afternoon.
Mr. Mullings is expected to outline the Government's position following Wednesday night's major blackout.
In the meantime, the management of JPS has scheduled a press conference for 2:30 Thursday afternoon.
High on the agenda is an update on the findings of its preliminary investigations and steps being taken to address the cause of Wednesday's blackout.
Preliminary indications are that the shutdown was triggered by a fault affecting the transmission line between the JPS' Duhaney substation in St. Andrew and the Tredegar Substation in St. Catherine.
In the meantime, the JPS says it remains committed to correct several problems confronting the company's transmission and distribution system.
Ms. Callum while not divulging the amount of money being spent on the rehabilitation efforts, is assuring members of the public that its a significant sum.
She said while measures have been devised to prevent widespread power outages, last night's incident happened before those measures could be implemented.
Corporate Communications Manager at JPS, Winsome Callum says the restoration exercise ended just under two hours ago.
Ms. Callum says the restoration work started within a few minutes of the system failure, with special emphasis on the communities closest to the Kingston and Montego Bay power generation centres.
Speaking on RJR's Newsline Seven Thursday morning, Miss Callum says the company does not expect a repeat of Wednesday night's catastrophe.
"Something like what happened last night, you never have that two days in a row. The system is fairly stable now but in terms of what caused the all island blackout last night there are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed and we are working to address those," said Ms. Callum.
"We cannot say with any surety that something like this will never happen again but I can give you the assurance that the problem was addressed last night and we are not expecting any disruptions today because of last night's problem,"
Miss Callum said investigations into the system failure continue.
She noted that the company had implemented several recommendations following a similar unscheduled power outage in 2006.
But she admitted that more needs to be done.
"The blackouts were caused by different elements of the system but the bottom line is that after the last major outage we had a report in which a number of recommendations came out. The recommendations were for some short term, medium term and long term action to be taken. We have taken all the short term measures, we have made all those adjustments to the system but for the longer term recommendations not all of those have yet been implemented," she continued.
Wednesday night, chaos reigned at major thoroughfares as angry motorists painstakingly negotiated traffic intersections.
In Montego Bay and other major towns it was a similar situation.
The Operations Arm of the Police High Command deployed police personnel to major traffic hubs in an effort to minimise any confrontations and to free the gridlock.
And Energy Minister Clive Mullings is to chair a press conference this afternoon.
Mr. Mullings is expected to outline the Government's position following Wednesday night's major blackout.
In the meantime, the management of JPS has scheduled a press conference for 2:30 Thursday afternoon.
High on the agenda is an update on the findings of its preliminary investigations and steps being taken to address the cause of Wednesday's blackout.
Preliminary indications are that the shutdown was triggered by a fault affecting the transmission line between the JPS' Duhaney substation in St. Andrew and the Tredegar Substation in St. Catherine.
In the meantime, the JPS says it remains committed to correct several problems confronting the company's transmission and distribution system.
Ms. Callum while not divulging the amount of money being spent on the rehabilitation efforts, is assuring members of the public that its a significant sum.
She said while measures have been devised to prevent widespread power outages, last night's incident happened before those measures could be implemented.
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