The only power plant on Saipan operated by a private company is currently offline, according to Charles Warren, chief financial officer of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.<\/p>\n
Warren confirmed yesterday that Power Plant 4, operated by Pacific Marine and Industrial Corp., has been offline for a week but remains on standby. That means it is not supplying any power to the Saipan grid. <\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune files show that Power Plant 4, located along Chalan Pale Arnold Road in Puerto Rico, is designed to generate 14.50 megawatts.<\/p>\n
With the Power Plant 4 offline, the island\u2019s power needs are being supplied solely by Power Plant 1, which is operated by CUC.<\/p>\n
Power Plant 1, situated in Lower Base, is expected to produce 71.70MW through its eight engines.<\/p>\n
Warren noted that CUC\u2019s decision to take Power Plant 4 offline \u201cwas purely a financial decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described the engines at Power Plant 1 as \u201cmore efficient\u201d than those of Power Plant 4 since they burn less fuel to produce the same amount of power.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith our current loads, [Power Plant 1] now has the capacity to handle the demand for the entire island,\u201d Warren said via email.<\/p>\n
When asked if CUC has any plans to buy out PMIC\u2019s contract given the former\u2019s enhanced capability to provide power to the island, Warren replied, \u201cThat is certainly an option.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune learned that PMIC\u2019s existing contract expires in 2016.<\/p>\n
CUC asked MPLT on March 27 to invest in the utilities agency by acting as a guarantor for a $7.5-million loan at a rate of 2 percent. MPLT, however, rejected the loan guarantor request, which was supposed to be utilized to fund improvements at Power Plant 4.<\/p>\n
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial recently placed CUC under a state of emergency and accepted executive director Abe Malae\u2019s resignation last week.<\/p>\n
When asked for comment, press secretary Angel Demapan said the administration does not anticipate any \u201cadverse\u201d impact by the switch from Power Plant 4 to Power Plant 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, it would prove more efficient given that [Power Plant 1] is a much more reliable source,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The only power plant on Saipan operated by a private company is currently offline, according to Charles Warren, chief financial officer of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.<\/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-161709","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\/161709","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=161709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}