On Sunday 9th June, 2024, a service interruption affected all VINLEC customers on mainland St. Vincent.
Vinlec, in an official release apologized for any inconvenience the outage may have caused, stating that restoration efforts were initiated immediately, and power was successfully restored to the entire island within two hours.
The company, in their release, recognized that the outages experienced on 9th June, and last week, 2nd June, were caused by an insulation failure on VINLEC’s 33kV switchgear at the Lowmans Bay Power Plant.
Vinlec said that despite these challenges, their system’s built-in redundancies allowed them to isolate the affected area on the switchgear, ensuring the continuity of island-wide operations.
“Sunday morning’s island-wide outage was specifically triggered by a switching procedure related to internal repairs to a section of the switchgear”, vinlec states.
They noted that they are currently awaiting parts from their suppliers to complete other aspects of the repairs.
This is the first time VINLEC has encountered an insulation failure with one of their switchgears that is unrelated to external factors like floods. Vinlec said that Switchgears are the backbone of the electrical network, and assured all customers that resolving this issue is their top priority.
VINLEC said its teams continue to work on restoring any lost redundancies, and they are committed to maintaining a stable electricity supply to all customers until the final repairs of the switchgear are completed.
