Vaz Demands Swift Fixes After Jamaica-Wide Power Blackout

Minister of Energy, Transport and Telecommunications Hon. Daryl Vaz has said Jamaica Public Service must act quickly on the findings and required fixes linked to the June 5 islandwide electricity outage, arguing that the country’s power network has to be made stronger.

“I have made it clear to the JPS (Jamaica Public Service) that this incident cannot simply become another report on a shelf,” he said.

In a statement to the House of Representatives on Wednesday, June 10, Vaz said Jamaica’s electricity infrastructure must be better prepared for operating problems, harsh weather and other threats that could affect the stability of the grid.

The Minister told the House that there is no present alarm over the grid’s stability. However, he said the preliminary report submitted by JPS on the blackout did not definitively state what caused the system failure.

“I have reviewed the report and have requested that the investigation continue until all outstanding questions are answered. The Jamaican people deserve a complete understanding of what occurred and the assurance that every reasonable measure is being taken to prevent a reoccurrence,” he stated.

Vaz said the 38-page initial report covers the outage, JPS’ operational response, the steps taken to restore power, and proposed actions intended to improve the strength and dependability of Jamaica’s electricity network.

According to the report, the disruption began at 9:02 p.m. in the Corporate Area while bad weather and lightning were affecting the system.

Vaz said JPS advised that the pattern of system trips and equipment behaviour points strongly to either a failure or late action by the main protection system at Hunts Bay on the Rockfort line, although further technical work is still being done. He said that situation appears to have allowed the fault to last longer, worsened the disturbance and spread instability across a wider section of the system.

The Minister also said JPS reported that heavy rain and lightning had led to more temporary faults on both the transmission and distribution networks in the hours before the blackout.

After the shutdown, JPS activated its incident command arrangements and began bringing the system back through a controlled black start and gradual rebuilding process. The company first separated the affected Corporate Area assets from the rest of the network.

Restoration then moved ahead by creating separate electrical islands. One of them, the Bogue Electrical Island, allowed customers in western Jamaica to begin receiving power again at 10:01 p.m.

JPS completed full restoration of the national grid at about 6:34 a.m. on Saturday, June 6.

Vaz stressed that investigations and technical assessments are still continuing so that the exact factors behind the collapse of the national grid can be established. He said an islandwide electricity failure is unacceptable in 2026 and should not happen again.

“What concerns me even more is that many of the issues identified in the preliminary report bear similarities to challenges that have been raised before… We simply cannot continue with the same old same old approach to system failures and expect different outcomes,” Mr. Vaz said.

The Minister referred to comparable outages in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2016, which he said were caused by lightning strikes and faults that were not cleared. He said Jamaica should not still be battling cascading grid failures 20 years later, given upgrades to the grid and technological improvements over that period.

He noted that the first three incidents were examined by the Office of Utilities Regulation, which issued several recommendations for JPS to carry out.

JPS is to continue detailed reviews of relay operations and sequence of events data at all affected substations. The company will also inspect and repair affected transmission equipment, including insulators, and conduct a full review and validation of line protection systems, with special attention to the Hunts Bay-Rockfort corridor.

The utility is expected to send its complete final report to the Office of Utilities Regulation in keeping with the Electricity Act 2025.