JPS reports 550,000 reconnected after Jamaica-wide blackout as Vaz orders emergency talks

The Jamaica Public Service says electricity had been returned to more than 80 per cent of its customer base by 6:00 a.m. Saturday, after an islandwide blackout the night before. The company put the figure at roughly 550,000 customers out of its total 690,000 accounts.

JPS said its teams were continuing work to bring back service to the remaining customers, with safety and speed being treated as priorities.

In a video posted to the company’s social media pages, JPS chief executive officer Hugh Grant said lightning could have played a role in the outage. The utility had earlier attributed the disruption to a system failure.

“What we do know, as of this time, is that during this incident there was significant lightning activity in the Corporate Area, particularly in the vicinity of some of our major generating stations, our major transmission facilities, and our major substations,” Grant said.

Rain had been affecting parts of the Corporate Area from Friday.

Grant said restoration had advanced across several sections of the country. “We have made progress in the restoration of the island, whereby we have restored several parishes in the western part of the island. Parishes such as Hanover, Westmoreland, St James, and Trelawny have been substantially restored. We have restored some customers in the central parishes, such as St Catherine and Clarendon, and we have also restored customers on the eastern side of the island in the parish of Kingston and St Andrew,” he said.

He added: “We are committed to getting to the bottom of what transpired, and we will keep you updated.”

Energy Minister Daryl Vaz has since summoned JPS to an emergency meeting scheduled for noon to address the incident. A press briefing is to follow the discussions.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Vaz said, “It is expected that the remaining affected customers will have power restored by early this morning.”

“I have been closely monitoring the situation all night and will continue to do so until full restoration is completed. I commit to keeping the nation advised and updated on this UNACCEPTABLE SITUATION,” Vaz added.

Vaz later issued a media statement saying the outage and the long wait for full restoration were not acceptable. “JPS must do better. A thorough investigation into the outage will take place.”

“I have advised the leadership of the JPS that the Government of Jamaica finds the all-island electricity outage to be totally unacceptable and expects that electricity will be restored to all customers safely and as quickly as possible,” Vaz said.

The minister said the cause of the failure must be established, and steps must be taken to reduce the risk of another all-island disruption.

“The Government recognises the significant inconvenience the all-island outage has caused to people across the island and has instructed the JPS to leave no stone unturned in ensuring restoration takes place as quickly as possible,” Vaz said.