As we featured last week a look at the several years of continuing power outages, which all the experts will tell you in the long run it costs the consumer more for the energy consumed as a result; this week in this issue is a letter from Montserrat Geothermal which expresses some measure of frustration.
Since our publication of the Montserrat Utilities (MUL) manager David Thompson assuring Montserrat that hopefully before Christmas the frustratingly long and new Generating Electricity Plant will be supplying electricity, to mean no more outages during the Christmas festivities and events as has been experienced for many years past.
Mr. Thompson following his brief response to our enquiry, just as the power plant had hoped to have solved the regular power outages, at least temporarily, supplied a little more in depth explanation as to when and how we might expect his hopes to be realised.
Mr. Thompson told us in a note that with respect to the new plant there were staff from the Indian contractors, staff from Belgium arriving on island along with, “other specialists on island who are seeing what can be done to accelerate the testing and bring forward the machine…” which he said, “requires testing, commissioning and powering up on the new generators.”
Mr. Thompson cautioned, “It not like just switching it on and there it goes,,,” “But,” he said, “it depends on what he tells us but we’re hoping that all of this can be completed this side of Christmas.”
The manager says with some optimism and caution. “There are one or two issues that might [occur] but I’m hoping that they don’t. if everything goes as expected we think it should be capable to have power to the island from that machine this side of Christmas.”
He concluded: “If something unexpected happens we may be able to sort it out there and then or we may have to spend a bit of time sorting it out but its unexpected so we don’t know.”
Since the little hiccup with the new temporary repairs, the last 24 hours have been promising with calls for understanding of a situation created by no fault of the wonderful utility workers who have been functioning under awkward and demanding circumstances.
Mean Energy Minister Paul Lewis has been speaking about energy and what the plans are for Montserrat. He says that the completion of the new power station expansion project must be seen as an important cog in the wheel of Montserrat’s future economic development thrust. That, despite the many challenges faced the teams have been able to bunch together for a common cause. He said the new facility will no doubt improve the working conditions as well as accommodate renewable resources such as geothermal and solar energy to go along with fossil fuel energy.
“…So we’re very conscious that we need to reduce costs and that is why one of the reasons why we’re pursuing geothermal and solar because as renewable energy the sources will definitely reduce the cost of fossil fuel and we’re hopeful we’ll be able to pass those savings or most or some of those savings on to the people of Montserrat,” he said.
