David J. Sablan, chairman of the newly revived Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board, is personally opposed to the standby charge being endorsed by the agency for its large customers that mainly rely on their own power generators for their daily operations.<\/p>\n
For Sablan, charging individuals that are not part of CUC\u2019s customer base simply doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cCUC is proposing to charge a certain fee for being off the grid and personally, I don\u2019t understand that because if someone is off the grid and not using our grid, why should we charge them?\u201d Sablan said in an interview with Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Pending at the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission\u2019s table is a decision on the proposed $20 per kW monthly charge for large customers, which is projected to bring in $2 million in annual revenues to the financially challenged CUC.<\/p>\n
If implemented, those who will be affected by the new charge are members of the Hotel Association of NMI and the Saipan Facilities Management Association, which earlier opposed the recommendation.<\/p>\n
According to Sablan, instead of pushing for the new charge, the utilities corporation should instead work harder on getting more customers back into its fold. He said there\u2019s no way he can support the recommendation of CUC.<\/p>\n
But because the standby charge proposal is already with CPUC\u2019s hands, Sablan hinted that the board cannot do something about it for now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s now in the hands of CPUC, but personally I am not in favor of it. I would rather sit down and negotiate with these commercial customers that are off the grid and see what needs to be done to bring them back to CUC,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When asked about the possibility of the CUC board asking management to amend the standby recommendation, Sablan said: \u201cThere\u2019s a possibility on that. But we need to look at what the procedures are. We have to make sure that if we were to stop that, we\u2019re not violating any regulation and policy. And my understanding is: a decision is forthcoming already [from CPUC].\u201d<\/p>\n
During the April 2 CPUC meeting, the commission\u2014after hearing concerns of both SFMA and HANMI\u2014ruled to delay action on the standby charge proposal to its next meeting on May 22. <\/p>\n
At the time, CPUC also disclosed the creation of an \u201calternative tariff,\u201d which is now being discussed by CUC, Georgetown Consulting, SFMA, HANMI, and CPUC\u2019s hearing examiner.<\/p>\n
CPUC reported that there are active discussions between parties on \u201cincentive rate options\u201d to encourage self-generating large commercial customers to become full-time CUC customers.<\/p>\n
Under the CUC\u2019s standby proposal, there are only two ways to prevent large commercial customers from paying the charge: to hook up to CUC or to physically disconnect from the grid completely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David J. Sablan, chairman of the newly revived Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board, is personally opposed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[54,49,257,50],"class_list":["post-31738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-agency","tag-cuc","tag-nmi","tag-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31738","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\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}