The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) executive chairman yesterday said it had “no interest” in a proposed floating power plant solution for its generation crisis, calling previous projections of 50 per cent savings “utter foolishness”.
 Media reports suggested that the Government was considering hiring a floating power plant, first proposal by the SGI Global Holdings consortium, to temporarily ease BEC’s woes until the Corporation’s restructuring process was completed.

But Leslie Miller told Tribune Business: “It’s asinine. What will happen when a hurricane comes? These things are used in New York, Boston and Chicago where they have massive project undertakings, and it is only for temporary purposes.

“We looked at it. It makes no sense. They know it’s a bunch of foolishness. The first hurricane and it’s gone, plus you have to rely on some outside source to provide you with LNG.”

He added: “BEC has no interest in that. This foolishness with saving us 50 per cent... first of all they can’t get any LNG because it’s not being exported out of the US right now. That will not work.”

SGI’s proposal was first submitted to the Christie administration in September/October 2012, and has since been “refreshed three times to cover all the bases”.

John Bostwick, the former FNM senator who is the attorney for SGI, said last year that the plan had been modified to show the barge-based generation units could use CNG or LNG, after the Government started talking about these as potential alternative fuels.

The SGI consortium’s proposal offered to supply electricity to BEC at a $0.28 per kilowatt hour rate for the first six years of any supply agreement, before dropping this to $0.25 per kilowatt hour in the seventh year.

Based on an average BEC price of $0.40 per kilowatt hour, the proposal represented a minimum 30-37.5 per cent savings on the utility monopoly’s then-prices. That, in turn, would translate into a multi-million dollar savings for Bahamas-based companies and consumers, stimulating economic activity, business investment/expansion and the creation of jobs.

Mr Bostwick told Tribune Business in a previous interview that SGI’s two barge-based power plants would bring “more than five times” New Providence’s average daily demand for electricity, and could be operational within 120 days of receiving all necessary approvals – including the signing of a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with BEC.
 But the Bahamas Electrical Workers Union’s (BEWU) president, Paul Maynard, expressed similar concerns to Mr Miller, adding that a change in fuel and equipment was needed at the cash-strapped corporation.

“What will happen when there is a hurricane and the sea is rough? It’s OK if you have a safe harbor,” Mr Maynard said.

“What we need is to switch the fuel and the equipment. Anything short of that is a waste of time. We need to go natural gas. We need to change the fuel that we have now. We are burning 1.6 million gallons a week of diesel. You can see why your fuel bill is so high. We need to get new equipment and we need to change our fuel. Anything other than that is a waste of time.”