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New power plant cushions JPS from oil shocks

Published:Friday | January 10, 2020 | 12:29 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Staff Reporter
Noel Watson (left), plant manager; Mo Majeed (centre), chairman of South Jamaica Power Centre’s Management Committee; and Emanuel DaRosa, president and CEO of JPS, participate in a media tour of the 194MW power plant in Old Harbour, St Catherine, on Thursday.
Noel Watson (left), plant manager; Mo Majeed (centre), chairman of South Jamaica Power Centre’s Management Committee; and Emanuel DaRosa, president and CEO of JPS, participate in a media tour of the 194MW power plant in Old Harbour, St Catherine, on Thursday.

President and CEO of the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), Emanuel DaRosa, says the new 194-megawatt combined-cycle power plant in Old Harbour, St Catherine, will cushion the effects of sharp spikes in the price of oil on the world market.

The JPS boss said that the new power plant, which is owned and operated by the company’s affiliate, South Jamaica Power Centre, would help to shield Jamaica from volatility in world oil prices.

In a Gleaner interview following a tour of the facility yesterday, DaRosa explained that the new plant would produce electricity with about half of the fuel that the previous power plants used to generate power.

Jamaicans should expect a marginal decrease in the price of electricity, said the JPS CEO.

“On the fuel side, this power plant will reduce the fuel bill for Jamaica between five and 10 per cent, depending on the price of fuel. So that is not insignificant for our fuel bill as a country,” DaRosa noted.

However, he said that while the plant’s fuel consumption was lower, the massive US$330-million investment in the facility would result in an increase in costs on the non-fuel side.

cleaner energy

The South Jamaica Power Centre is now the largest and most efficient fuel-burning power producer in the country. Using natural gas, the plant will provide cleaner energy than the older plants that it will replace.

It is Jamaica’s second power plant to operate on natural gas, following the conversion of the JPS’s Bogue Power Station in Montego Bay, from automotive diesel oil (ADO) in 2016.

Testing on the alternative fuel – automotive distillate oil – will begin next week and is expected to be fully operational by March.

Joseph Williams, senior vice-president of generation at the JPS, said that the country could expect increased stability in the supply of electricity, noting that the new plant was not likely to experience the problems that plagued the old power facility.

“Since we have been commercially available, our reliability factor has been 99 per cent,” he told The Gleaner.

The combined-cycle power plant uses natural gas as its primary fuel, and it can use automotive diesel oil as a back-up.

“So in the event we lose natural gas, then it automatically switches to automotive diesel oil, so we have diesel oil stored in the tanks on land and the natural gas stored in the ship offshore,” Williams added.

There are 39 people now operating the state-of-the-art power plant in Old Harbour, an approximately 50 per cent decrease over the 80 personnel who operated the old plant.

He said that many persons from the old plant have been retained while others would gain employment at the Jamalco plant, which would be operated by the JPS.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com