In the early hours of Thursday morning, a widespread blackout cut power to the entire island of New Providence, Bahamas, after an underground cable fault sparked a transformer explosion and subsequent electrical fire at the Blue Hills Power Station, according to official updates from Bahamas Power and Light (BPL), the territory’s primary electricity provider.
The utility company issued its first public alert regarding the outage at approximately 4:00 a.m., confirming that the incident at the generation facility had led to a total loss of electricity service across all of New Providence. Preliminary engineering investigations launched immediately after the incident traced the root cause to an suspected fault in an underground transmission cable, which triggered the blast that destroyed a 15-megavolt-ampere (MVA) transformer at the station and ignited the resulting electrical fire.
Emergency response teams quickly contained the blaze, extinguishing it safely before any additional damage to the facility or injuries to personnel were reported. Immediately after the fire was put out, specialized BPL repair and grid restoration teams were deployed to begin bringing the system back online. Initially, the company warned customers that it could not provide a definitive timeline for full service restoration, given the extent of the damage caused by the explosion.
Just two hours after the initial outage was reported, by 6:00 a.m., BPL confirmed that staged grid restoration work was well underway. To protect grid integrity and prevent a secondary collapse, service was brought back to communities incrementally rather than restoring all power at once. The first neighborhoods to regain service included Bonita Bay, SC McPherson, Winton 1 and 2, and Harold Road, alongside portions of Yellow Elder and Stapleton Gardens.
Within 30 minutes of that update, the company added more restored communities to the list: the popular tourist hub Paradise Island was brought back online, along with East Street South, South Beach Estates, Pinewood, Marshall Road, Bamboo Town, Fox Hill Road, and sections of the Prince Charles neighborhood. By 7:00 a.m., service had also been restored to Gladstone Road, Firetrail Road, and portions of Carmichael Road and Sears Road.
In BPL’s latest public update, issued at 7:18 a.m., just three hours and 18 minutes after the initial outage was declared, the company confirmed that approximately 50 percent of all New Providence electricity customers had already had their service restored. Restoration teams remain on site across the island working around the clock to restore power to the remaining affected customers as quickly as possible, while prioritizing worker and public safety throughout the process.
BPL has issued a public appeal for customers who remain without power in areas that have been officially listed as restored: those customers are asked to contact the company’s 24-hour customer call centre at 225-5275 to report their individual outages so crews can address localized issues. In a closing statement, the utility apologized to all customers for the major service disruption and extended its gratitude to the public for their patience as the final stages of restoration continue.