> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Bahamas Is Writing Down What an Electricity Supplier Owes Its Customers When the Power Fails. Comments Close at 5 p.m. on 4 December. - URL: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/bahamas-urca-consumer-protection-plan-electricity-suppliers-4-december-2026/ - Published: 2026-11-07T13:39:59.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-08T05:21:18.000Z - Description: Bahamian regulator URCA opened consultation ES-32/2026 on 2 November. Submissions close at 5 p.m. on 4 December. Section 16(2)(i) makes a damage-compensation procedure a statutory minimum, and resorts, marinas and gated communities that on-supply electricity sit inside the licence class. - Author: Theon Alleyne - Tags: Bahamas, Energy, Regulation, Utilities, Analysis, Beat: energy-transition-tariffs, MSME: direct **Quick summary:** Bahamian regulator URCA opened consultation ES-32/2026 on 2 November on consumer protection plan guidelines. Submissions close at 5 p.m. on Friday 4 December 2026\. Section 16(2)(i) of the Electricity Act, 2024 makes a damage-compensation procedure a statutory minimum, and resorts, marinas and gated communities that on-supply power are inside the licence class. By LCN Business Desk A business whose freezer, compressor or server dies in a power cut has one question, and it is the same question in Nassau as in Georgetown: who owes me what. The Bahamas is writing the answer down, and the law already decides part of it. A procedure for claiming compensation for damage is not an option a regulator is weighing. It is one of nine things an electricity supplier's plan must contain. The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority [opened the consultation](https://urcabahamas.bs/urca-launches-consultation-on-consumer-protection-plan-guidelines-for-authorised-public-electricity-suppliers/?ref=lacaribenanews.com) on 2 November. It is numbered ES-32/2026, it runs to 25 pages, and written submissions close at five in the afternoon on Friday 4 December, by email to info@urcabahamas.bs or delivered to the regulator at Frederick House on Frederick Street in Nassau. ## What must a supplier's plan contain? Nine things, set by statute rather than by the regulator's preference. Section 16(1) of the Electricity Act, 2024, [as the consultation document sets it out](https://urcabahamas.bs/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/ES-322026-APES-Consumer-Protection-Plan-Guidelines.pdf?ref=lacaribenanews.com), requires every public electricity supplier and every authorised public electricity supplier, within three months after the issue of its licence, to submit a plan to URCA for approval. Section 16(2) then fixes the floor. The plan must carry standards for service, quality and safety; procedures for receiving and responding to complaints; dispute resolution; an accelerated procedure for billing disputes; notice of disconnection; protection for vulnerable consumers; amendment as technology or circumstances change; publication of the standards; and, at subsection (i), "a procedure for filing and determining a claim for compensation for damage." That last item is the one a business reads twice. The guidelines put a shape on it at paragraph 65: the procedure must explain how a consumer may claim compensation for "property damage or loss alleged to result from the electricity service, equipment, work, termination or another act or omission", evidence requirements must be proportionate, and the written decision must state the evidence considered, the findings, the reasons, the compensation or credit and the review route. Two further clauses close the usual escapes. Paragraph 66 provides that a consumer "shall not be required to waive a statutory or regulatory right as a condition of receiving a remedy that is already due". Paragraph 64 provides that the person conducting an internal review "shall not simply repeat the original decision", and must be able to consider evidence, correct an error and authorise a remedy. Approval is not private either. Sections 16(3) to 16(5) require URCA to publish a proposed plan for public consultation before approving it, allow the regulator to require revisions after that consultation, and require the approved plan to be implemented and enforced. ## Who counts as an electricity supplier here? A hotel, a marina, a homeowners' association and a private cay, among others. The licence class sounds like a utility and is not confined to one. The guidelines state at paragraph 3 that some licensees supply an entire island or community "while others supply electricity within a private development, a co-operative arrangement or a predominantly self-supply private island or cay", and they devote separate sections to private developments, resorts, marinas and residential communities; to community-owned or co-operative suppliers; to predominantly self-supply private islands and cays; and to mixed arrangements. The same paragraph forecloses the argument that scale should soften the duty. Differences in operation "may affect how a Licensee gives effect to a requirement, but they do not transfer the obligation from the Licensee or reduce the minimum protections required by law." So a resort that generates its own power and recovers the cost through a room rate, a marina selling dockside electricity, and a gated community recovering generation through a maintenance fee are each dealing with a consumer who will have a written complaints route, a damage-claim procedure and a disconnection notice period. For a commercial tenant, a concessionaire or a charter operator, the counterparty is the landlord and the instrument is an electricity licence. ## What if the electricity is inside the rent? It has to be disclosed, and it has to be challengeable. The guidelines define a bundled electricity charge as an amount or cost-recovery mechanism included in "rent, a homeowners' association or maintenance fee, an accommodation or service charge, membership dues or another composite charge." Paragraph 44 then requires the plan to explain four things about it: the allocation or cost-recovery method, the information made available to the consumer, the records supporting the calculation, and how the electricity component may be questioned. Paragraph 45 sets what a statement must show, and it reads as an invoice specification: the billing period, usage or allocation, rates and adjustments, taxes, fees, credits, arrears, the payment due date, and enquiry and complaint contacts. A business paying one monthly figure to a landlord has, on this reading, a route to the arithmetic behind the electricity share of it. That is a different relationship from the one most commercial tenants in the region currently have, and nothing in it requires separate metering first. ## Can the power be cut over a rent dispute? The draft says no, in terms. Paragraph 58 makes termination a last resort and requires the plan to identify each lawful ground, the minimum notice, the content and method of notice, contact attempts, payment assistance, internal review, and the circumstances in which termination is prohibited or deferred. Paragraph 59 then speaks to a tenant directly: "Electricity shall not be terminated merely to enforce an unrelated land, rent, membership, employment, hospitality or other dispute." The same paragraph requires a termination notice to distinguish the undisputed electricity amount from other sums. Paragraph 60 provides that a restart fee "shall not be charged where the termination resulted from the Licensee's error or failure", and separates restart after non-payment from restoration after a wrongful termination. Paragraph 67 provides that a consumer shall not be required to pay a disputed amount, withdraw a complaint or sign a payment agreement as a condition of maintaining or restoring supply where the regulations protect against disconnection, and that where supply has been cut contrary to those protections the licensee must restore it promptly and reverse the disconnection and reconnection charges. Complaint handling carries its own timing. Paragraph 62 requires procedures that are free, easy to find and available through more than one reasonable channel, with written acknowledgement of a verbal or written complaint "ordinarily provided within five business days." ## How does this compare with Guyana? One regulator is writing the obligation in advance. The other published a score after the year ended. Guyana's Public Utilities Commission found that Guyana Power and Light met two and a half of eight performance targets for 2025, a finding this newspaper set out alongside the company's own instruction to customers to notify it before increasing load, in [an account of what the record shows against what GPL said](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/gpl-connection-delays-puc-record-benchmark-2026/). The same regulator's record sits behind [GPL's blackout news conferences](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/gpl-blackout-news-conferences-interenergy-2026/), and the grid is the subject of [a Caribbean-wide question about port shore power and capacity](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/cruise-shore-power-caribbean-ports-grid-capacity-grenada-2026/). | | The Bahamas, proposed | Guyana, current | | ------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------- | | Instrument | a consumer protection plan per supplier, approved by the regulator | performance targets measured by the regulator | | Timing | written and approved within three months of licence issue | scored after the period | | Consumer comment | invited on the guidelines, and again on each proposed plan | not part of the published target-setting | | Damage compensation | a statutory minimum under section 16(2)(i) | no equivalent published claim route | | Reaches a resort or marina that on-supplies | yes, as a licence class | not addressed | *URCA consultation ES-32/2026 and the Electricity Act, 2024 as cited in it; the Public Utilities Commission finding as reported by this newspaper.* Neither column describes a country where the lights stay on. Guyana's grid losses, its four-region outage and its gas-to-energy delay are all on this newspaper's record. What separates the two is the order of events: a Bahamian business argues with a document before the failure, and a Guyanese one reads a tally afterwards. ## What does a business do with this before 4 December? Name a loss, name a clause, and send it. A submission that identifies a provision and a specific exposure is worth more than a complaint about service. Three provisions are worth testing on the current text. Paragraph 65 reaches "property damage or loss", which is wider than an adjustment to the bill, and how far it carries into business interruption is not settled on the face of it. The vulnerable-consumer category is built around households, and whether a business running medical or food refrigeration reaches it is unaddressed. And the five-business-day acknowledgement is an acknowledgement, not a decision, with the decision period left to the Consumer Protection Regulations for the Electricity Sector in The Bahamas, ES 13/2020. Responding is open to anyone. URCA invites "electricity sector licensees, consumers and other interested stakeholders", and a hotel, a cold-storage operator or a manufacturer is a consumer of electricity. A separate date sits in the same month: public and authorised public electricity suppliers are expected to file tariff review applications with URCA no later than 1 December 2026. For a business elsewhere in the region the document is worth having for nothing. A regulator has written out what it holds an electricity supplier owes a customer, clause by clause, and published it. ## What is not established here? **The Consumer Protection Regulations themselves.** ES-32/2026 repeatedly defers to those regulations for the periods within which a complaint must be acknowledged and decided, and states that those regulations apply to both licence classes. The decision period a consumer actually gets therefore sits in them, and they are not read here. **What the licence conditions require on their own.** The guidelines direct a plan to address APES Licence Condition 27 on consumer protection obligations and Condition 28 on service standards. The conditions are named in ES-32/2026 and their text is not reproduced in it. **Whether a plan is already in force for any supplier.** Section 16(1) runs from the issue of a licence, and ES-32/2026 is guidance on preparing a plan rather than a register of approved ones. No approved plan is cited here for any named licensee. ### The entities \- **Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA)** is the independent regulator of the electricity sector in The Bahamas, continued by the Electricity Act, 2024, which opened consultation ES-32/2026 on 2 November 2026\. - **Electricity Act, 2024** is the Bahamian statute whose section 16 requires a consumer protection plan and sets its nine minimum contents. - **Authorised Public Electricity Supplier (APES)** is the licence class these guidelines address, covering suppliers to private developments, resorts, marinas, residential communities, co-operatives and private cays as well as whole islands. - **Consumer Protection Regulations for the Electricity Sector in The Bahamas, ES 13/2020** are the regulations a plan must be no less protective than, and which set the complaint-handling periods. - **Public Utilities Commission** is Guyana's utility regulator, which measured Guyana Power and Light against eight performance targets for 2025\. - **Guyana Power and Light** is Guyana's state electricity company, found to have met two and a half of those eight targets. ### What the title card says \- Kicker: Energy. - Headline: the Bahamas is writing down what an electricity supplier owes customers when the power fails. - Deck: URCA consultation ES-32/2026 closes at 5 p.m. on 4 December, and a damage-compensation procedure is a statutory minimum. - Standfirst: resorts, marinas and gated communities that on-supply electricity sit inside the licence class. - Panel, "What section 16(2) requires", sub-headed as the minimum contents of a consumer protection plan under the Electricity Act, 2024, four rows of requirement against subsection: - Service, quality and safety standards, at subsection (a). - Complaints, dispute resolution and accelerated billing disputes, at subsections (b) to (d). - Disconnection notice and vulnerable consumers, at subsections (e) to (f). - A procedure for filing and determining a claim for compensation for damage, at subsection (i). - Panel note: source, Electricity Act, 2024, section 16(2), as set out in URCA consultation ES-32/2026\. - Chip: 4 December 2026, 5 p.m., submissions close. - Chip: ES-32/2026, the consultation reference. - Chip: three months after licence issue, the period within which a plan must be submitted. - Chip: 2.5 of 8, the targets Guyana's Public Utilities Commission found GPL met for 2025\. - Date line: 7 November 2026. ## Frequently Asked Questions What is the deadline and how do I respond? Five in the afternoon on Friday 4 December 2026\. Submissions go by email to info@urcabahamas.bs or are delivered to URCA at Frederick House, Frederick Street, Nassau. The regulator invites licensees, consumers and other interested stakeholders. Does it cover compensation when an outage damages equipment? A procedure for filing and determining a damage-compensation claim is a statutory minimum under section 16(2)(i) of the Electricity Act, 2024\. Paragraph 65 of the guidelines extends it to property damage or loss alleged to result from the service, equipment, work, termination or another act or omission, with proportionate evidence requirements and a written reasoned decision. Does this reach a resort or a marina that generates its own power? Yes. The guidelines address suppliers operating within a private development, a co-operative arrangement or a predominantly self-supply private island or cay, and state that such differences do not transfer the obligation from the licensee or reduce the minimum protections required by law. Can a landlord cut the power to settle a rent dispute? Paragraph 59 provides that electricity shall not be terminated merely to enforce an unrelated land, rent, membership, employment, hospitality or other dispute, and requires a termination notice to distinguish the undisputed electricity amount from other sums. Is there a Guyanese equivalent? Not on the record read here. Guyana's Public Utilities Commission measures Guyana Power and Light against performance targets and published that it met two and a half of eight for 2025\. That is a score after the fact rather than a plan approved in advance, and it carries no published damage-claim route.