"Stop Feeding WAPA's Furnaces with Dollar Bills"

dirty paradise

Testimony presented to The Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection earlier this year and reported in the St. Thomas Source, confirmed that “Virgin Islanders pay some of the highest electric rates in the United States.”   

According to WAPA Executive Director, Hugo Hodge Jr., dire “cash shortfalls" are the result of “massive spikes” in the price of the oil that the authority burns to produce electricity, even "as these costs "outpace the revenues collected under the LEAC," or levelized energy adjustment clause.    


Testimony given by St. Croix engineer, Gustav James, P.E.,  however, identified the real problem as WAPA’s generators, which “don't just burn expensive fuel, they do so inefficiently.”  James’s calculations from his own WAPA bills revealed that WAPA generators run at 18 percent efficiency, a figure not far off from the 21 percent efficiency reported by Hodge.  

 James made a number of specific recommendations, including replacing WAPA’s current generating turbines with “new, more efficient reciprocating generators [that] would pay for themselves in less than a year in savings. That would make financing extremely attractive, and allow an initial LEAC reduction even as the new units were being paid for.”  

Citation:

Baur, John. "WAPA Conversion Could Cut LEAC 30 Percent in 2014." St. Thomas Source. 22 Feb 2013: n. page. Web. 7 Jul. 2013. <http://stthomassource.com/content/news/local-news/2013/02/23/wapa-conversion-could-cut-leac-30-percent-2014>.

 

Picture Citation:   

BFM, . dirty paradise. 2012. Photograph. http://thebarefootmom.wordpress.com/, St. Croix, USVI. Web.   7 Jul  2013.<http://thebarefootmom.wordpress.com/category/the-st-croix-years/the-not-so-good/page/2/>.

The full text of James’s testimony has been made available online by Senator Craig Barshinger at http://tinyurl.com/lwb466x