PPA conference kicks off today at Crowne Plaza

The four-day 30th Pacific Power Association Annual Conference and Trade Exhibition will kick off today, Monday, at the Crowne Plaza Resort Saipan’s Hibiscus Room.

At a press briefing last Friday at Crowne Plaza, PPA acting executive director Gordon Chang said PPA is all about having three types of members.

Chang said one is the utilities and they have 25 utilities from all over the 19 Pacific Islands.

He said then they have the commercial members, who are composed of folks that sell engines, consultants, or whoever that has to do with the utilities.

Chang said the third one is the affiliates, which are the donor partners like the World Bank, European Union, Asian Development Bank, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, and others.

He said before the COVID-19 pandemic, they had 156 members, but they’re slowly coming back now.

Chang said 18 utilities registered to attend the conference and that they are hitting close to 200 people.

“From what I was told the number we have is 198 participants and that’s not include the participants that coming from the local utilities, CUC (Commonwealth Utilities Corp.),” he said.

This year’s conference theme is “Technology and Finance Readiness for a Green, Sustainable and Resilient Power System Network.”

Chang said because the conference is being held this year on Saipan, CUC introduced them to the University of Hawaii and they’re coming in and have some funding that they would like to use it on the member utilities.

He said not only the University of Hawaii, but also folks from the National Renewable Energy are also coming.

“We’ve been surprised from the interest it has that we’ve come up here in Saipan,” Chang said.

CUC acting executive director Betty G. Terlaje said they’re not expecting 198 participants from off-island as they’re even worried about making 150 because the cost of airfare has significantly gone up.

“And now it’s 298 so that’s very pleasant news for CUC, for the CNMI. This is one of the reasons we did this, we’re so far away our economy is suffering the most but also to have the Pacific leaders in the utility industry come and see what the CNMI, this side of the islands are going through with regards to our utilities,” Terlaje said.

Hopefully, she said, the members will bring some solutions to CUC too and vice versa, they could share their challenges.

Terlaje said this conference is a great opportunity to network and be able to avail and benefit from the other utilities of what they have to offer, what CUC has to offer in the presentations.

Last year, PPA voted that the conference will be held on Saipan.

This is CUC’s third time to host the conference. The first one was in the 1990s and the second one was in 2001.