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Local Items: Power Situation on the island ?'s
Bonaire Talk: Local Items: Archives: Archives 2005 - 2006: Archives - 2005-01-01 to 2005-03-01: Power Situation on the island ?'s
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Aaron Holoway (New BonaireTalk Poster - Post #1) on Thursday, February 24, 2005 - 1:58 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

We will be arriving on feb 6th to bonaire and were wondering what the situation was with the power. We will be staying at the plaza. Are they letting people use the AC in their rooms? Is it affecting the dive ops providing filled tanks? If they are doing the rotation i guess it wont be all bad as it is a honey moon trip and the candle light would be cool, but i kind of want power. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance for any help given. I will be checking this till 12 pm Bonaire time. See you on the island sat feb 6th at 3:30 pm

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Tish Dace (BonaireTalker - Post #22) on Thursday, February 24, 2005 - 7:10 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

Aaron, do you mean March 6th? April 6th? February 26th? Whichever, you should not encounter any problems with obtaining filled tanks.
There will likely be some periods when you have no electricity in your room, but these might even be during your dives, when that won't matter.
As for AC, the government is urging us not to use it or to limit use to 30 minutes at a time and use a fan instead the rest of the time. I prefer to keep my windows open and enjoy the trade winds. Also, don't leave lights on, TV on, etc. if you're not using them.
The more that everybody on the island limits electrical use, the fewer power outages we experience. :-)
Enjoy your honeymoon!!
Tish

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Aaron Holoway (New BonaireTalk Poster - Post #2) on Thursday, February 24, 2005 - 8:16 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

sorry feb 26th i will be there this saturday

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Harrie Cox (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #214) on Thursday, February 24, 2005 - 9:07 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

Hi Aaron,

The reception desk of Plaza will probably have copies of the rotating-darkness schedules of the WEB, so you can find out when you will need your candles, and also can see where not to go for dinner, unless you want to have some extremely romantic dinners.
When Plaza doesn't have, check BT\Local Items\ WEB Schakelschema's, where I will try to keep the newest schedules updated. It is in Papiamentu, but again the hotel should help you out.

Have a nice honeymoon.

BTW. I heard that another extra generator arrived yesterday from Venezuela, so again a little bit more capacity is there.


Harrie

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ron Myers (BonaireTalker - Post #88) on Thursday, February 24, 2005 - 10:56 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

Is there a potential end to the power problems, or is this going to be considered normal for the foreseeable future?

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Karin van Veen (Extraordinary BonaireTalker - Post #1725) on Thursday, February 24, 2005 - 12:53 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

On amigoe.com I read that new generators arrived yesterday.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Robert Grover (BonaireTalker - Post #57) on Thursday, February 24, 2005 - 1:41 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Aaron,
One additional thing to be aware of. When the Plaza looses electrical power, they also loose water pressure. I don't know if it has to do with needing pumps running to feed water to the buildings or what. We were at the Plaza in September and had several power outages due to lightning strikes at the power plant. During those periods we also did not have water. Make sure you keep some water in containers to drink during the outages.

Robert

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Harrie Cox (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #215) on Friday, February 25, 2005 - 10:27 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

As far as I understood, the "new" generator that arrived on wednesday is again an old one, it came from Venezuela and has far too little capacity to serve continously on the plant. So that one is too to tide over the time till the "final solution" comes in place.
What I heard, is that there were asked for some specialists (from USA?) to give an advice on what is really needed to solve the problem for the long time. I don't know if these specialists have been here already. There is also the discussion to move the power plant to a complete other location, this would be the ideal moment to make such a decision. I even heard rumours that a discussion was going on on getting some windmills, together with the new power-plant.
The money wasn't a this big item, because the insurance would pay quite an amount because of the fire.

WEB had until the fire damaged quite a lot, 2 generators of 3.0 MW, 2 generators of 2.0 MW, and 4 generators of 0.6 MW. Two of the big units weren't in service, one due to electrical wiring problems, and one due to problems with spare-parts, the other two big units got damaged in the fire.
The leftover capacity of 2.4 MW was enlarged with two generators from Curacao of 1.55MW together, and there was an extra unit as far as I understood, from the dutch Navy, capacity unknown to me, and the one from Venezuela, that came in wednesday, also capacity unknown.
When you count everything together, a spokesmen said that there is now a total capacity of 8.8 MW available, where a peak/capacity of 10.5 MW is needed. (I don't understand how he counted that out, but let's believe this).

As far as I understood, the specialists were talking about a "heavy duty" generator of 5 MW, for which orders were to be asked at American and European producers.

When you overview the whole situation, also regarding the way things work on these islands, I don't believe the situation will be solidly solved within several months, and I think we will have to learn to live with the rolling darkness-schedules, for half-a-year to a year.
Actually the low season is coming now, so less tourists here and less AC's and dive-compressors will be working, that could bring some more "air" for our powerneeds.

But actually you get used to this situation, as mentioned before, although there were lots of problems with the power in Bonaire, it was way better than 20 years ago, when power went off daily. We will survive!

BTW, don't trust the block-out-schedules too much, we (Hato) were planned for a power-outage on wednesday, for about 4 hours, and we were happy, to keep our power, but it came, with a delay of 25 hours, the next day, unscheduled.

Harrie

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Sue Goodman (BonaireTalker - Post #93) on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 7:57 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

I returned today from 9 nights at the Plaza (& a 10th in the MoBay airport courtesy of Air Jamaica! - see thread in Getting to Bonaire). We arrived 17 Feb & departed 26 Feb. We only had 2 blackouts - Wednesday & Thursday this week from 3-5pm. The front desk knows the schedule so you can ask them. They do have a note in your room asking you to turn off all unneeded lights and only put A/C on when you need it (they are correct when they say the units will cool a room in 5 minutes) to conserve power.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Cynde (BonaireTalk Deity - Post #13195) on Monday, February 28, 2005 - 11:34 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

Sue, good to hear the blackouts weren't for long. Harrie Cox, who lives on the island has been posting the outage schedule here, it lists areas and restaurants as well.

http://www.oldbonairetalk.com/newsgroup/messages/36/213950.html?1109379779

 


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