JPS probes unexpected ‘cascading effect’ behind blackout

The Jamaica Public Service (JPS) says it is investigating an unexpected "cascading effect" triggered by lightning activity that led to Friday night's islandwide power outage, leaving the entire country without electricity for several hours.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, JPS President and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant said the blackout began at approximately 9:02 p.m. amid significant lightning activity near critical generating stations, transmission facilities and substations in the Corporate Area.

According to Grant, five transmission lines connected to a major substation were knocked offline during the storm.

"As a result of the significant lightning activity, we lost five of our transmission lines emanating from one of our significant substations in the Corporate Area. In parallel with that, we had a cascading effect causing the loss of generation across the entire island," he said. "This cascading effect resulted in a shutdown of the entire grid."

Grant acknowledged that the widespread system failure was not something the utility expected.

"The thing that we have to learn from right now is exactly what transpired that caused this cascade effect, whereby, as a result of lightning strikes in one area of the grid, we have a cascading effect of generating outages across the grid. That is not something that we would expect to happen," he said.

The JPS chief also revealed that a fault was detected on a high-voltage transmission cable linking the Hunt's Bay Power Station and the Newport substation in Kingston, while damage was also identified at the Rockfort substation.

Despite the scale of the outage, Grant said backup systems functioned as intended. Within an hour, crews were able to "black start" generators at the Bogue power plant in western Jamaica and begin restoring electricity to customers.

Power restoration continued throughout the night, with the entire grid back online by approximately 6:30 a.m. Saturday.

Grant said the company has now entered the investigative phase and is committed to determining the root cause of the outage and implementing measures to prevent a recurrence.

"We will not stop until we get to the bottom of it and be transparent in terms of the learnings, the findings, and how we go forward from there," he said.

Energy Minister Daryl Vaz, who attended the briefing alongside Water, Environment and Climate Change Minister Matthew Samuda, said the Government has requested a full independent investigation into the incident.

"The Government expects transparency, accountability and clear answers. We remain committed to ensuring a reliable and resilient electricity system for all Jamaicans," Vaz said.

He also dismissed speculation circulating online about the cause of the outage.

"I want to make it very clear that it was a system failure of the JPS. All of the conspiracy theories that have been making the rounds are fake news," he said.

The outage affected homes, businesses and essential services across the island.

Meanwhile, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has directed JPS to submit a preliminary incident report by Monday, June 8, and a comprehensive report within 30 days of power restoration.

OUR Director General Ansord Hewitt said the regulator's immediate focus was ensuring that service was restored safely and that the system remains stable. He added that the agency will examine the cause of the blackout, assess whether lessons from previous incidents were properly implemented and determine what regulatory actions may be required.

"We're concerned about the stability of the system," Hewitt said. "We're also interested in finding out what happened, why it happened and what will be done to mitigate the possibility of similar occurrences in the future."