A Proposal for a More
A PROPOSAL FOR A MORE RESILIENT VI: LET'S START PUTTING OUR ELECTRICAL LINES UNDERGROUND 🇻🇬 This is not intended as criticism of BVIEC or its hardworking employees. I appreciate the men and women who go out and work to restore electricity when outages occur. However, I believe the time has come for the Government of the Virgin Islands and BVIEC to seriously consider a long-term, phased progra...
A PROPOSAL FOR A MORE RESILIENT VI: LET'S START PUTTING OUR ELECTRICAL LINES UNDERGROUND 🇻🇬 This is not intended as criticism of BVIEC or its hardworking employees. I appreciate the men and women who go out and work to restore electricity when outages occur. However, I believe the time has come for the Government of the Virgin Islands and BVIEC to seriously consider a long-term, phased programme for placing more of our electrical distribution infrastructure underground.
When electricity can be off from approximately 8:00 a.m. until after 2:00 p.m. on a Sunday, without a major hurricane or severe weather event, it raises an important question about the resilience of our present infrastructure. Has BVIEC calculated how much revenue the Corporation itself loses during prolonged outages?
There is also the wider economic cost to the Territory: businesses lose revenue and productivity; supermarkets and restaurants face possible food spoilage; equipment can be affected; and residents and businesses incur additional costs to operate generators. Government should consider commissioning or publishing a comprehensive assessment of the true economic cost of power outages to the VI.
ELECTRICITY IS PART OF OUR TOURISM PRODUCT We also need to look at this through the lens of tourism. Our tourism product is not only our beautiful beaches, sailing waters, hotels, villas and restaurants. Reliable infrastructure is part of the visitor experience. Visitors expect dependable electricity, water and telecommunications.
Frequent or prolonged outages can affect accommodations, restaurants, businesses and ultimately a visitor's perception of the destination. Therefore, investing in reliable electricity infrastructure is also an investment in the quality and competitiveness of the BVI tourism product.
DON'T TRY TO DO THE ENTIRE BVI AT ONCE — PHASE IT I recognise that placing the Territory's electrical infrastructure underground would require significant capital investment, engineering and planning. So don't attempt to do everything at once. Start with one village or community at a time.
Identify priority areas based on outage frequency, vulnerability, population, tourism and commercial activity, infrastructure condition and the feasibility of underground construction. For smaller and less complicated areas, establish project targets in the region of 6–12 months, where technically feasible.
Larger and more complex areas may require 12–24 months or longer, depending on terrain, road conditions and existing utilities. And while construction is taking place in one community, the surveying, engineering, budgeting and procurement for the next community should already be underway.
That creates a continuous infrastructure programme rather than a series of isolated projects. THINK 10, 15 AND 20 YEARS AHEAD Government and BVIEC could establish a 10-, 15- or 20-year Electrical Resilience and Undergrounding Programme, supported by clear priorities, funding strategies, annual targets and public progress reports.
Every year, another section of the VI becomes more resilient. Every completed community represents electrical infrastructure that is better protected from wind, falling trees and other hazards associated with overhead systems. We learned difficult lessons from Hurricane Irma. We should use those lessons to determine how we build for the future.
Undergrounding will not eliminate every outage, and it comes with its own engineering and maintenance challenges. But that is exactly why we need a proper technical and economic feasibility study rather than dismissing the idea because of the initial cost. The study should ask: What does undergrounding cost?
But equally important: What does NOT undergrounding continue to cost us? Consider BVIEC's lost revenue, business interruption, generator expenses, lost productivity, tourism impacts, infrastructure repairs and the economic consequences of major storms. This should be about planning the VI we want 10, 15 and 20 years from now.
Primary source: The Real BVI Community Board (Facebook)