The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Deputy Chief Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

SEVERAL months have passed since PowerSecure signed a five-year agreement with the government to manage Bahamas Power and Light Company Ltd (BPL) and its executive team still has no definitive answer on the cost of a new power generation plant to replace the “obsolete” one at Clifton Pier or when key elements of its costly business plan are to be revealed.

In February it was revealed that the government paid PowerSecure around $900,000 to draft a business plan to steer the cash-strapped electricity provider into safe territory. Its details, while promised, were never revealed.

And given the condition of the Clifton Pier plant, concerns regarding the cost of a new one, its continued longevity and how money would be raised by the company to afford a new plant have continued to loom.

These issues have again been raised as BPL appears to struggle to restore power supply to consumers in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. The category 4 hurricane began affecting New Providence last Wednesday night and many Bahamians have remained in darkness since.

As of yesterday, BPL has restored supply to around 52 to 53 per cent of its customers, according to company CEO Pamela Hill.

However, when she and Kenneth Kociuba, executive vice president of BPL, were asked critical questions regarding BPL while appearing as guests on Guardian Talk Radio’s “The Revolution”, with host Juan McCartney, they seemed unable to answer in definite terms.

Asked how BPL planned to raise the funds for its new plant, taking into consideration a mandate from the government that they were not to increase the cost of power for consumers, Mrs Hill outlined in brief how it would be done.

Later, when she was asked why the business plan had not been made public, she said it entailed reliability of customer service and the cost of stability and affordability.

She said: “Like I have always said, I really admire the task that a Prime Minister or really any leader of any country has. BPL is a government agency and the Prime Minister or any leader of a country has any number of different responsibilities to their constituents that they must meet.

“I would say in terms of BPL’s path moving forward or how to put us on track for better financial performance and ultimately better operational performance we’ll start in a few ways. We are going to look internally to see where we can make sure that we are being as efficient as we can.

“So for instance I mentioned the cost effectiveness of using units like the Aggreko units that burn less fuel. So burning less fuel because you’re fuel-efficient. It means an improved bill for our customers so we’ll look at opportunities like that improved bill because less fuel means you have less fuel to pass through to a customer.

“We’ll also look at how our own units are consuming fuel. We’ll look at how to make reliability improvements so that our units are more efficient and in that way help to bring down a customer’s rate.

“What we will do is continue to work with employees to see how we can improve our operational practices, which then can lead to cost savings in terms of having units that are more efficient. So that’s how we’ll start really, is by looking for those opportunities.”

Regarding the remaining lifespan of the Clifton Pier plant, Mr Kociuba said it was hard to estimate this or the cost of a new facility.

He said: “We have three stations there. One of the stations is pretty deplorable with an infrastructure that’s not in good shape. The other two stations ‘Bravo’ and ‘Charlie’ had their share of condition issues. They can limp along but as you can see, we continue to on a weekly basis, the unit will have to come offline because of a component of the system that we either don’t have or we don’t have the right material to fix it with.

“It’s hard to say (what a new plant will cost) because you don’t know what kind exactly.

“When I was over in the US, most companies today are going to combined cycles which is gas or indoor propane (or) it could be solar. Solar here would be tough to do only because there’s not enough land to do so and you’re not going to get many megawatts out of it.

“But on the island where you have more area to work with we are going to have some opportunity where we are going to go into renewables. So that’s the kind of things that we have to look at,” he continued.

“Much of our stuff, for example like one of our sites Clifton Pier, the parts are obsolete. We just don’t have the parts any more and so then you have obsolete parts and that’s been a part of the structure for years.”

During the contract signing in February, PowerSecure executive Ronnie Brannen admitted that despite the hefty price tag attached to the business plan, his company had only come up with a plan to cover a 90-day period.

He suggested that this was because they were faced with several challenges, including aging infrastructure, high operating costs, expensive and insufficient fuel and organisational deficiencies among other things.