CUC grid reaches critical state

The Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s electrical grid has reached a critical state due to the lack of funding.

In his report to the CUC board, Power Division manager Gary Camacho said that critical state means an increase in the number of power outages, the creation of unnecessary expenses, dangerous risks, hardships for power customers, a critical impact on Saipan’s economic growth, and the effect on other critical CUC services such as water and wastewater.

“It is very difficult for our community that our power is unreliable, not knowing when you’re going to have power, and even nowadays the weather doesn’t have to be bad to have power outages,” Camacho said.

He said that they have had several customers and businesses complaining about power outages and that they try to work as quickly as they could to resolve the issue.

Camacho said that CUC’s primary lines are severely dilapidated, affecting the power distribution in 26 villages on Saipan.

“This is something that we have been trying to address as far back as 2008 and it is getting worse,” he said.

Line clearing has also been a very big challenge for CUC due to equipment needs, according to Camacho.

“The vegetation has grown past the power poles and we don’t have the time for clearing the lines, so now we just move the poles, which also causes more time for other services,” he said.

Camacho said it costs about $10,000 a month to clear the lines and he hopes they could find a contractor to resolve this issue.

CUC board chair Dave Sablan Jr. recommended an invitational bid to be proposed for possible contractors who might do the line clearing and clear the vegetation from power lines.

Sablan also agreed that CUC should be charging customers who have trees or vegetation growing around power poles or have them clear it. Camacho said that they will have to notify customers of the vegetation trimming.

CUC serves over 14,000 customers and has about 11,450 poles.

One other issue is that CUC lacks pole hardware and that it is difficult to change power poles at the moment.

Progress

According to Camacho, they have done an “operational sweep” that identified 200 incidents of utility theft, they have certified linemen for power poles, more accurate mapping systems, improvements on systems for CUC, net meters, and load analysis for prepaid metered customers.

CUC also completed the replacement of a defective switchgear at American Memorial Park that provides power to the hotels nearby, completed 80 240-volt kWh meter retrofits to 208-volt kWh meters, 18 job orders for line clearing, and have identified and reported 10 meter tampering and 16 illegal power connections.

CUC staffing has increased a little for the Power Division with 51 personnel that includes one management, four administrative staff, 19 engineers and meter inspectors, and 27 distribution linemen.

Sablan said that they will need CUC management to progress more on important issues.

CUC executive director Alan Fletcher said that the integrated resource planning is on the way as well as a few contractors for renewable energy and more improvements on services.