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CUC: 61 pct. on Saipan with power
As of Tuesday, 61 percent of customers now have electric power on Saipan, according to Commonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director Gary P. Camacho.
In his presentation during yesterday’s CUC board meeting, Camacho said that an estimated 8,316 customers have already been energized.
Completed pole installation is at 65 percent, primary wire connection is at 77 percent, secondary wire connection is at 13 percent, service wire connection is at 36 percent, and framing is at 66 percent, he added.
On Tinian, Camacho said almost 40 percent of customers now have power. He conceded, though, that restoration efforts there started late.
Camacho said completed pole installation is at 20 percent, transformer is at 40 percent, primary wire connection is at 4 percent, secondary wire connection is at 38 percent, service connection is at 2 percent, and framing is at 20 percent on Tinian.
In a later interview, Camacho hopes to have 100 percent power back on Saipan and Tinian by the middle to end of February—depending on a different number of things and availability of materials.
“There’s going to be a lot of people connected between now and then, as the connection will continue to grow,” he said.
On Tinian, CUC intends to meet 100 percent power restoration by the end of January for all residential customers and the businesses would be toward early to mid-February, Camacho said.
More materials arrived on Saipan on Wednesday night and more would arrive again on Dec. 27.
Camacho also disclosed that they are finalizing a contract for additional linemen to come by the end of the year to the first few days of next year to add to the existing ground labor force and speed up the restoration.
“That’s going to affect Saipan and Tinian,” he said.
Camacho said that installing concrete poles is the direction they want to go as wooden poles are just very challenging to get.
“We want to make it better, more resilient, stronger, hard, consistent,” he said, adding that 200 concrete poles are coming in.
