TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Electric outages

There has been a lot of outages from GEBE lately. Is the French side power supplied by this company? I read the areas impacted today, and it doesn't look like any on the french side.

No, GEBE is only on the Dutch side.

We mostly stay on the French side and about 2 years ago we had a few outages during the week we were there. Don't know if it is a regular occurrence.

I just got back from 8 days on the French side. There were no interruptions that I noticed.

We drove all the way from maho to grand case to see harmony nights for nothing today.... The was no power anywhere in the area....

Our son & girlfriend took the boat from SBR to the Marigot Marina for dinner last night. They ate by candle light. The whole marina was dark.

Last night the power was out for a few hours. Rumor has it that power was out for the entire French side from Marigot to Oyster Pond. We are in Oyster Pond on the French side of the island. Seems that power this trip has been off a lot but it generally doesn't last too long.

Bob

I think the power was off all over the french side last nite, we went to harmony nights last nite also. The place we were sitting said it would be on by 6 but ended up taking some street bbq home and it came back on at 8 at orient village. We were told there was a fire somewhere around the electric plant. Rained alot yesterday morning but cleared by 11 so still a good day.

Each side has its own issues.

On the French side EDF the national french power supplier has megabucks to invest. There is a brand new generator and the operational staff are badly trained.
The average outage is about 30 min, sometimes a few hours when it is due to network failure. Power is subsidized by the government.

On the Dutch side a private company called GEBE supplies power. They lack cash to have enough insight. The whole infrastructure is ageing and crucial investments have been postponed for too long.
The average outage is 4 hours. Given the high cost of power there is growing dissatisfaction and authorities are being held accountable for the situation.
The good news is that they are now investing in solar.

Unfortunately, nothing is going to help the infrastructure if they don't get someone in there that knows something about power supply and demand. Who cuts the power to the island at 7am for testing/upgrades with a sane mind? Hate to say it, but going solar isn't going to change things if they don't hire employees who know and understand what they are doing.

One of the nice things about staying at Club Orient is that they are "off the grid" and generate all their own power with multiple generators on site.

This also allows them to provide BOTH 115-130 VAC and 230-260 VAC outlets in all their buildings.

Lucky you! Just don't plug the toaster and hair dryer in at the same time!

We have been going to SXM for apx 20 years and it seems electric outages have been more often in the past year or so. On the French side it seems to be rare to loose power but on the Dutch side it happens a lot. We normally stay at Mary's Boon in the Simpson Bay area which is a small hotel and it has a fairly new big generator which kicks in within a few sec which powers the entire hotel as do most of the bigger hotels so we really never notice any power issues. Also when the power goes off so can cable TV which even if the power is not effect in your area. Anyhow...just one of the things we take for granted in the USA that this small island in the middle of the ocean deals with. Small price to be in Paradise as far as I'm concerned! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/toast.gif" alt="" />

We normally stay on the Dutch side - the past couple of years, GEBE has had some issues and, it appears, that a lot of hotels and restaurants have invested in generators. This is wonderful but we checked into Flamingo last month and the ONLY building that wasn't provided generator power was ours - the 7000 building. No biggie, though. We unpacked in the dark (only messed up a couple things)and walked down the hill to Topper's where there was generator power and all was well. I guess as long as you don't have medical issues that NEED power or food that can spoil, the power issues aren't too bad. That said, I don't think we ever had power outage issues on the French side in all the years we stayed there.....

I agree, the issue is also the shortsighted government.

They should make solar heating for hot water compulsory on all new buildings. The should also subsidize AC refits that decrease power.

St Maarten Govt lack the big picture. Too much politics and not enough hard work...

Sorry but GEBE is not a private company but owned by the government (people) of the Dutch side which is why we all hold the government responsible.