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Charlotte Amalie
Thursday, March 28, 2024
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LEAC Going Down For Now

The V.I. Public Service Commission approved reductions in V.I. Water and Power Authority customers’ fuel surcharge fee for both water and electric customers Friday, in part reflecting increased efficiency due to switching St. Thomas water over to reverse osmosis.

WAPA requested, and the PSC approved, reducing the electric LEAC by $0.0125 from $0.347618 per kilowatt hour to $0.335096; for a roughly $6.26 per month savings for an average household using 500 kilowatt-hours per month.

The new rates became effective April 1.

The reduction would have been larger, but the PSC approved WAPA’s request to incorporate an extra $0.023 per kilowatt hour into the electric system LEAC to finance WAPA’s 18-month temporary lease of a spare 22-megawatt General Electric mobile power plant.

WAPA entered into the lease in order to give the utility an opportunity to take its other units offline for extended periods for maintenance work that will increase the plant’s fuel efficiency. Meanwhile the leased unit is itself more efficient than WAPA’s units.

Georgetown Consultants’ Larry Gawlik urged the PSC to include the 2.3 cent charge on the electric system LEAC, arguing that cash flow constraints were a major factor in why WAPA’s generators were behind on maintenance. Gawlik also extolled the long-term benefits in fuel efficiency and reliability that would come with major overhauls of WAPA’s generators.

The PSC also approved reducing WAPA’s water system LEAC by $1.62 per thousand gallons, from $15.74 per thousand gallons to $14.12.

WAPA anticipates requesting small increases in its base rates to improve its credit standing, but those requests were not before the PSC on Friday.

At the request of Attorney General Vincent Frazer, the PSC voted to open up a docket – the PSC equivalent to a case in a court – to consider revoking the SeaTrans ferry contract for the St. Croix-St. Thomas route.

SeaTrans has had serious financial difficulties and has not run the St. Croix route regularly since its flagship vessel, the Royal Miss Belmar, ran aground in July of 2011.

PSC attorney Tanisha Bailey-Roka said the PSC had been monitoring SeaTrans’ performance, but by law, the executive branch had to initiate any revocation of a ferry franchise agreement.

In other business, the PSC retroactively approved Eligible Telecommunications Carrier status to TerraCom Wireless to supply Lifeline program services in the form of free cell phones with 250 minutes per month for low-income households. The approval already went forward as a matter of law because the PSC was unable to meet before the statutory deadline due to a temporary lack of a quorum.

The PSC discussed Pungitore and TCG Global’s status as a small independent power generator, also by default, due to the past lack of a quorum. Pungitore and TCG Global want to build a power plant that would produce "syngas" from used tires to generate up to 28 megawatts of power. If successful, the companies would have to import roughly 10 or so 40-foot cargo containers of used tires per day to fuel the plant, Gawlik told the PSC.

All votes were unanimous. Present were Chairman Donald "Ducks" Cole, Sirri Hamad, M. Thomas Jackson and Elsie Thomas-Trotman. Verne David was absent.

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