THE entire island was plunged into darkness about 5:00 yesterday morning, which the light and power company – Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) – later blamed on problems at its power station in Old Harbour Bay, St Catherine.

The power outage came almost a year to the July 15 islandwide blackout which the JPS said was caused by lightning.

Yesterday’s power outage severely disrupted the morning’s peak-hour traffic flow, especially in the capital, Kingston, and forced some businesses to open late in areas where power was not returned until late morning and in the afternoon.

By late afternoon the JPS said power was restored to all its customers. There were, however, reports of power outages in sections of Portmore in St Catherine and sections of Kingston last night. It was not clear if last night’s outages were linked to the system failure that led to the islandwide blackout.

“We recognise that today’s (yesterday’s) power outage would have resulted in significant inconvenience to both residential and business customers, some of whom were without service for much longer than expected. For this we apologise,” said JPS president and CEO Damian Obiglio, in a press release.

The release said the company was continuing its investigations into the power outage, but said preliminary indications were that the incident was triggered by a fault on the transformer of one of the company’s generating units at the Old Harbour Bay power station.

Earlier in the day, Winsome Callum, head of corporate communication at the JPS, said power restoration was being done on a phased basis, with electricity being first restored to areas closest to the company’s two main generating centres in the eastern and western ends of the island.

“Having identified what we believe is the fault that triggered the outage, we are not expecting that there will be any long-term issue beyond today as a result of the incident this (yesterday) morning,” Callum said.

Last night, David Geddes, director of consumer and public affairs at the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), said the JPS yesterday provided the agency with a preliminary report on the all-island power outage, although it had 48 hours to do so. But he said the company was asked to provide a detailed report within two weeks.

Geddes said that according to the preliminary report submitted by the JPS, it did not appear that yesterday’s outage had any link with the July 2006 islandwide blackout.

The OUR will be carrying out its own investigation into the blackout.

In the meantime, while businesses in some sections of the Corporate Area enjoyed a return of electricity as early as 10:00 yesterday morning, up to 4:45 pm store owners in the Portmore Mall, the largest shopping complex in the Caribbean, did not have their electricity supply restored.

However, shop owners in the nearby Portmore Town Centre had their power supply returned just after 11:00 am.

At the popular Silver Slipper Plaza in Kingston, several store owners opened for business and used lanterns and lamps to provide light. But despite the absence of air conditioning, shoppers were seen milling around, some using paper to fan themselves while shopping.

“Everything work out all right so far, the only thing is that the shops are hot,” one employee of the Ten to One store in the plaza told the Observer, on the condition of anonymity.

At King Street in downtown Kingston and the Mall and Tropical Plazas along Constant Spring Road, St Andrew it was business as usual, as these areas were among those that had their electricity supply returned by 10:00.

Meanwhile, Opposition spokesman for energy, Clive Mullings, has demanded that the JPS provide a full explanation to the public about the all-island blackout.

“The JPS has an obligation to its customers and the country to state the cause of the blackout,” he said.

The power outage, said the Opposition spokesman, severely affected commercial and residential users. “There have been numerous reports about commercial and residential equipment being damaged by the frequent and unannounced power outages over the last few weeks,” he said.