Private sector to CUC: No power for sale

In a closed-door conference Monday, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. tried to put together the beginnings of a plan that would have let it purchase excess electricity produced by local businesses with gas-powered generators—a bid to boost CUC’s power supply—yet the private sector’s response offered little hope that the embattled utility will get any added help meeting the CNMI’s power needs.

At issue in the conference, held at the Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s office in Garapan, was CUC’s effort to arrange an agreement for so-called “net metering,” a practice in which businesses or private citizens sell the electricity they produce to the public power grid. Those who attended the meeting said CUC officials polled local business owners to learn whether they have the generating capacity needed for such an arrangement.

Recently enacted legislation has made net metering possible and CUC will soon finalize regulations letting homeowners and businesses take advantage of the new law.

However, several sources at Monday’s conference—attended by representatives of at least eight hotels, CUC officials and others—emerged from it less than optimistic that net metering will resolve any of the CNMI’s chronic power shortages, which have already sparked widespread public outcry. Many reported that businesses declined to take part in net metering because the private generators they use are designed to meet only their needs and do not provide enough power for them to sell excess back to CUC. Moreover, others noted that supplying power to CUC could lead to other problems.

“It’s not that we don’t want to help out,” said Mark Moss, who manages facilities for DFS Saipan Ltd. “But why would I want to put more of a hardship on our system in terms of maintenance and wear and tear to give back to an agency that should be providing power to us?”

In addition, Moss noted that the estimated $1 million DFS has invested to meet its power needs is enough only to power DFS itself and not to sell any to the government.

Officials with CUC were not immediately available for a response as of press time. Yet Rep. Tina Sablan (I-Saipan), who attended the conference, said the effort to find additional electric power for CUC in the private sector got a meager response.

“We just wanted to find out if these businesses first have the excess generating capacity and, if they do, whether they would sell that back to the grid,” Sablan said. “But we didn’t even get very far, because as we went around the room, nobody said they had any excess generating capacity.”

During the meeting, she noted, CUC representatives floated the idea of reviving generators at the now defunct La Fiesta complex, an empty building once intended as the site of a shopping mall. Those generators, she said, could provide up to 3 megawatts of electricity. On net metering, Sablan said that after the inquiry, it appears CUC can now explore other options to meet the CNMI’s power demands.

“At least we can say that we’ve explored this option and it’s not feasible, so now we can move on to another option,” she said.

Kyle Calabrese, the Chamber’s executive director, echoed Sablan’s sentiments.

“Although the answer is perhaps not the one that all of us as consumers would like to hear, it’s important to know that answer so we can move on and look at other options as a community,” he said.

Lynn Knight, president of the Hotel Association of the Northern Marianas Islands, attended the conference and said CUC’s power problems have put a strain on businesses large and small throughout the CNMI, including hotels.

“Hotels right now have to focus on efficiency,” she said. “It’s just as hard for large businesses to survive in this power crisis as any of the others. The overall message of the meeting was that hotels don’t have any excess capacity.”