By Leon SuseranThe Branch Manager of the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL),Nick Hagglund Toronto Shirts, Mr. Ayube Bacchus, has apologised toGPL Berbice Operations Manager, Ayube BacchusBerbicians for the recent spate of power blackouts which gripped the entire Berbice area.Over recent weeks, both East and West Berbice have been plagued by power interruptions during the day and night. This intensified Tuesday evening when there were some nine blackouts between 18:45 hrs and 23:00 hrs.Bacchus blamed Tuesday’s ‘fairy- light’ blackouts on a thunderstorm that passed through the area. “I know customers are not happy with the state of affairs in the region,Tim Krul Netherlands Jersey, and rightly so”.He noted that last Tuesday around 18:45 hrs, “we experienced a severe lightning storm that hit our network, both at Onverwagt and Canefield [Power Stations]”. Bacchus added that the lightning strikes were so severe that one strike split the top of four power poles at Number 29 Village, West Coast Berbice and brought them down. That plunged the entire West Berbice in darkness.Compounding the situation, “spurious shutdowns” began to follow. It was certainly a bad night for GPL, since the problems were not over. In East Berbice,Al Kaline Tigers Jersey, there were trees that became entangled with transmission lines. “That brought down the system as well”.The split poles in Number 29 Village saw the company making several attempts to re- energise the affected areas.“Shortly after,Xavier Woods Youth Jersey, it went down again because of encumbrances in the transmission lines that triggered these spurious trips”.He said that because the series of unfortunate events took place during the nighttime and while it was raining heavily,Mario Osuna Mexico Jersey, “we could not really send crews out there. Even though we attempted to close back [the circuits (re- energise)], we said that we cannot continue anymore”.The company then activated what is called ‘isolation’ whereby the company broke apart the interconnectivity within the East and West Berbice network, in a bid to find the source of the “spurious trips”.As a result, the transmission line between Skeldon and Canefield was taken out of operation.? The transmission line linking Onverwagt and Canefield Power Stations was also put out of operation, in a bid to find the fault and re- power small clumps of the population. The power stations were then operating independently from each other.“We had to close up there and try alternative measures to power up the consumers over that period of time”. “We could not have moved power in bulk supply,Ethan Pocic Seahawks Jersey, even though we had the generating capacity and that is what really triggered Tuesday night’s spurious blackouts”.He apologised but said that the problem was beyond GPL’s control at that point in time.The following morning, he noted that the crews were sent to “run the line and they found, in certain areas, that trees got entangled, limbs broke off and got entangled in the lines so we had to clear that off”, in both East and West Berbice.He noted that all of Regions Five and Six were re- energised fully by Wednesday afternoon and the system was normalised again.