island wide power outage 01.27.2023

[robin]

Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if this happens during the Royal visit?

[Arawak]

Just an FYI, power outages have nothing to do with power generating capacity or overdevelopment. Aruba has far more power capacity than islands of comparable size or even bigger. You can see the power generated and used vs the capacity on the WEB website. The increase in blackouts over the last few years are due to new state of the art systems(computers, failsafes, production hardware) being implemented in the power plant together with taking old boilers offline to run more efficiently and save on the cost of heavy fuel. Blackouts always happened, it's nothing new. However those of us who have lived here do remember that when blackouts happened in the past, it took many hours and sometimes even days to get fixed. Now with these new systems most people are back up and running within 2 hours. They just need to figure out what the root cause is so they can address it and that takes time above all else.

[annf]

I have been on the island for 14 years.....there were many years with no power outages. I think last year there were 5. January is not over and we have experienced #1. Whatever the reason...those in charge do not seem capable of finding the root cause!

[robin]

I think what is most troublesome in my mind is that many of these outages are the whole island. The city I live in at home is only .5 sq mile smaller than Aruba. We have our own municipal utility, so that is very similar, but we have half the population. I don't ever remember having the whole city down. Yes, sections surely, especially when a vehicle takes out a telephone pole, during thunderstorms or ice storms, an animals gets into a substation, someone takes down a tree and powerlines with it, etc. Yes, we in the state do have the option of tapping into the grid as a backup and I know that Aruba does not. But something should be in place in case of a major failure-a backup generator of sorts.

[WaltVB]

I would bet software bugs are the root cause. There is no such thing as zero-defect software.

[Andrea J.]

The power surges are very problematic when electricity is restored.
Taste My Aruba restaurant lost some equipment when the power surged back on.
I bet they are not the only one.

[flpctc]

Thank you Andrea for reminding me to shut off /unplug all appliances etc.

[robin]

We have most things on surge protectors.

[flpctc]

Thanks for that reminder Robin...surge protectors. I asked Tim if we had any and he said uh...not yet!