The 80-Megawatt Controversy

The Issue: After three years, CUC decides to collapse the 80-megawatt project down to a 60-megawatt power plant.

Our View: Origin of confusion started with CUC’s non-technical people rendering an ill-conceived decision.

The genesis of confusion in the planned 80-megawatt power project started with the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation’s non-technical people issuing an ill-conceived decision on a purely technical matter perhaps without an inkling of the magnitude of the issue at hand.

CUC should have exercised extra caution in how it approaches the issue given that all eyes from companies submitting bids will focus on every move it takes. It involves not necessarily $120 million as the price tag, but more like $1.2 billion over the lifespan of the 25-year contract.

Protests from bidders were immediately filed with the Public Auditor’s Office on alleged violation of procurement regulations. The PA’s Office recommended that CUC begins anew. It did only to finally settle on a new decision–collapse the project–down to 60-megawatt.

Lobbyists and politicians have now entered the fray, adding piles of confusion on top of an already confused situation. To each his own on beat and dance while the general public tries to sift through the maze only to find itself even more confused: Why collapse the 80-megawatt project and is the subsequent decision of 60-megawatt the appropriate one? Can CUC explain with a set of facts the rationale behind 60 versus an 80-megawatt power plant? What’s the basis for collapsing the orignal proposal and is it based on a set of thorough study?

Perhaps what CUC needs to do immediately is retain an experienced financial analyst and other pertinent technical expertise to review the issue independently so to determine what the island really needs in terms of current and future power consumption. Otherwise, we would only be perpetuating a confused debate over whether the planned project ought to be 80 or 60-megawatts.

If you will, under which proposal would the NMI realize its needs and still save more money down the stretch and by how much? Can CUC give us a comparative explanation how it arrived at its recent decision? After all, the dense fog of suspicion must clear the air once and for all.

Perhaps it is equally appropriate at this juncture for CUC to decide for the eventual privatization of the utility agency. A government-run utility agency only grants politicians and bureaucrats a field day to mess things up often at the expense of consumers. It’s time that this issue is seriously considered for we all know the efficiency so inherent in a privately run operation. Si Yuus Maase`!