Dominica Electricity Services (DOMLEC) says its national power grid has been restored to its full capacity although not all customers are back on the grid because of displacement, renovation and construction of homes.
DOMLEC’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Adina Bellot-Valentine made this statement to the media during a recent tour of DOMLEC’S diesel plant at Sugar Loaf in One Mile, Portsmouth.
She said DOMLEC’S Sugar Loaf plant has returned to normal operations since Hurricane Maria.
“Sugar Loaf has returned to normal operations in the sense of the station being tied to the national grid. The station operated in island mode soon after Hurricane Maria for approximately one year and ten months,” Bellot said. “The plant was initially established to assist with voltage or compensate for transmission loss and, over the year, we have seen its significance repeatedly, but in particular, after the passage of Hurricane Maria.”
Bellot-Valentine continued, “We were able to provide power to the entire north from Carib territory on the Sugar Loaf East Feeder and Capuchin to Colihaut on the Sugar Loaf west feeder. At least, that assisted in restoring a sense of hope to the other utilities, hospital, fire service, police, vendors, merchants and citizens in general, given the many challenges faced with rebuilding the transmission and distribution infrastructure.”
She added that DOMLEC’s overall peak at this time is 13.63 megawatts with an overall installed capacity of 26.7 megawatts and Sugar Loaf has an installed capacity of 7.1 megawatts.
Valentine further stated that the hydro plants at Laudat and Trafalgar are operational with the exception of the Padu Hydro Station. She said efforts are being made to restore that station in early 2020.
According to Valentine, the media tour of the Sugar Loaf plant is part of efforts by DOMLEC to to educate the media more about the utility’s operations so that they can better inform the public. She said this is something that DOMLEC tries to do as regularly as possible to familiarize the media with the operations of the company.”
“We think that it is important that the media knows about the workings of the company because so many times we have members of the public making comments via radio, print media or online media about certain things and media persons do not have the responses that is required to address the situations as far as the customers are concerned,” the DOMLEC PRO noted. “So, we really think that it is important that the media has a “hands on” in terms of what DOMLEC is all about.”
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