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\u2014a bid to boost CUC\u2019s power supply\u2014yet the private sector\u2019s response offered little hope that the embattled utility will get any added help meeting the CNMI\u2019s power needs.<\/p>\n
At issue in the conference, held at the Saipan Chamber of Commerce\u2019s office in Garapan, was CUC\u2019s effort to arrange an agreement for so-called \u201cnet metering,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Recently enacted legislation has made net metering possible and CUC will soon finalize regulations letting homeowners and businesses take advantage of the new law. <\/p>\n
However, several sources at Monday\u2019s conference\u2014attended by representatives of at least eight hotels, CUC officials and others\u2014emerged from it less than optimistic that net metering will resolve any of the CNMI\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that we don\u2019t want to help out,\u201d said Mark Moss, who manages facilities for DFS Saipan Ltd. \u201cBut 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?\u201d <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d Sablan said. \u201cBut we didn\u2019t even get very far, because as we went around the room, nobody said they had any excess generating capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s power demands. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt least we can say that we\u2019ve explored this option and it\u2019s not feasible, so now we can move on to another option,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kyle Calabrese, the Chamber\u2019s executive director, echoed Sablan\u2019s sentiments. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough the answer is perhaps not the one that all of us as consumers would like to hear, it\u2019s important to know that answer so we can move on and look at other options as a community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lynn Knight, president of the Hotel Association of the Northern Marianas Islands, attended the conference and said CUC\u2019s power problems have put a strain on businesses large and small throughout the CNMI, including hotels. <\/p>\n
\u201cHotels right now have to focus on efficiency,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019t have any excess capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2014a bid to boost CUC\u2019s power supply\u2014yet the private sector\u2019s response offered little hope that the embattled utility will get any added help meeting the CNMI\u2019s power needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}