News

Customers east of Prospect, excluding North Side, have recently experienced above normal levels of outages within the last month as CUC transitions through a very active period of substation upgrades. The upgrades will increase capacity and reliability to customers in the affected districts, but in the interim, the necessary configuration to facilitate these upgrades reduces system redundancy and increases the vulnerability to outages.
The most recent outage occurred in the early hours of Sunday, May 26 due to lightning damage. Customers in the Savannah, Newlands, Lower Valley, Bodden Town, Frank Sound and East End areas experienced interruptions to their electricity service between 3:32 a.m. and 7:41 a.m.
CUC’s line crews responded immediately to replace the damaged equipment and worked throughout the early hours to restore service to customers. Approximately 3,250 customers were affected. Under normal circumstances less than half this number of customers would have been affected. Customers regained service at various intervals throughout the morning as CUC personnel worked diligently to safely restore service to all customers affected. The final customers had their electricity restored at 7:41 a.m.
CUC has completed upgrades to the South Sound, North Sound Road, and Rum Point Substations in October 2018, March 2019 and April 2019 respectively. The Bodden Town Substation is currently out of service for refurbishment and is planned to be fully back in service by the end of June. During the intervening period, customers who would normally be supplied from the Bodden Town Substation are being supplied from the Frank Sound or Prospect Substations and are exposed to a greater risk of outages.
In June 2019, CUC will begin construction of a new Prospect Substation with completion expected in 2020. CUC is able to complete the construction with minimal exposure to outages as the existing substation will remain in service throughout the construction period
CUC has planned major upgrades to Frank Sound substation in 2021.
Following this major programme of upgrades and refurbishments to the eastern substations, CUC will be able to meet foreseeable load growth with increased reliability for its customers. As the Cayman Islands continue to grow and our population increases, CUC continues to invest in our country and our people, consistently striving to achieve our vision of empowering Cayman to be a global leader.