Coleby-Davis Potters Cay Dock Electrification this year

From The Nassau Guardian

Energy and Transport Minister JoBeth Coleby-Davis said yesterday that the electrification of Potters Cay Dock will be complete within six months to the end of the year.

Coleby-Davis, speaking to reporters at the unveiling of a Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) generator at Potters Cay Dock, said: “We can confirm that BPL has done most of the heavy lifting in terms of the infrastructural upgrades needed to be able to bring electricity to Potters Cay. And then we were looking at where we would put the meter boxes, and I am told that the area underneath the bridge was originally designated for the meter boxes.

“Then you’ll have the connectors and the spiders connected to each of the vendors to go out and power up their individual sites. We were looking at making sure that if we lose power in one area, we do have our backup that is already in place and installed.

“So once we are able to provide power, we’ll also be able to support the level of demand that’s put onto the grid. Because every vendor would not have the same demand.”

Coleby-Davis said there are different vendors on Potters Cay Dock with different stall sizes, “so there’ll be a different demand for some of the vendors. And so just making sure that we do the work from a BPL standpoint to bring electricity, that’s why we’re here today,” Coleby-Davis noted.

Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources Jomo Campbell also said: “I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone that came together to make this initiative possible. We look forward to giving a good, final, beautiful product, not only the vendors, but the Bahamian public at large. We always focus on the tourists, but Potters Cay always used to be a point of relaxation for Bahamians, and so we want to make sure we bring these things back, because this is our culture.”

Coleby-Davis also said: “From our standpoint, I just came on as the minister of energy, and we had to make sure that we did full assessments. We were in talks when Minister [Clay] Sweeting was at agriculture, and we spoke about advancing this project.

“Obviously, my colleague who’s there now, Minister [Jomo] Campbell, has been speaking with the vendors and working with the team at agriculture, and they have made it clear, this has been a long enough time waiting, and they spent a lot of money to power up their stalls, and it’s very much a priority for them to be getting electricity to their stalls.

“So the minister kept knocking on my door, and I made sure that BPL was ready to come out here and say, from BPL’s standpoint, where we are, and so it’s important for us to make sure we tick all of the boxes so that we do it right for our vendors.”

Ormanique Bowe, president of the Potter’s Cay Dock Fish, Fruit, and Vegetable Vendors Association, also said: “We wanted this a long time, and now it’s here, and I’m sure that my vendors will embrace the opportunity.

“Most of them have already put the mechanism in for electricity. So, most of us have electrical supplies in place and meter boxes in place, just ready for them to come and run the spiders.

“We had a transformer here for quite some time. It’s been eight years that it’s been locked up in there. I’m surprised it’s still a brand new, so we’re ready to go. We’re ready for electricity. We don’t have to buy ice no more. We can put ice makers in our stalls. We don’t have to pay $60 to $70 per night to run generators.”

Currently, vendors have to run generators to power their stalls.