The Beginning

As an integrated electric utility company, we have served the island of Jamaica for many years. We are the proud inheritor of a tradition that dates back to the late 1800s. The Company has evolved over the years, from private ownership, to Government ownership, to its current structure of 80% share ownership being in the hands of private investors, 19.9% remaining with the Government of Jamaica, and the rest in the hands of a group of minority share owners.

Jamaica was one of the first in the world to have electricity. The journey began when the Jamaica Electric Light Company started to supply electricity from a small coal-burning steam generating plant on Gold Street in Kingston. This was quite an achievement for Kingston, a small island city, then only nineteen years old. At that time, many large British cities were still without electricity.

Scaling and Growing

Thirty-one years later, on May 25, 1923, the Jamaica Public Service Company Limited (JPS) came into being as a legal entity, providing service to 3,928 customers. Up to that time, electricity had been provided by a number of small suppliers, whose assets were eventually taken over by JPS.