Power disruptions to continue: Duma

STATE Enterprise Minister William Duma says the ongoing disruptions to power supply will continue for some time but could be fixed “given time, proper management and technical expertise”.
He blamed the outages on a “major refurbishment and renovation” at PNG Power Ltd’s Rouna facility.
“The power grid in Port Moresby is served by two different sources,” he said.
“An independent power source supplies about 80 megawatts. PNG Power supplies about 50 megawatts.
“Everything was operating fairly well until PNG Power decided to undergo a major refurbishment and renovation for its facility up at Rouna.”
Duma explained that the facility was built in the 1960s by Australians and that no major refurbishment had been carried out since.
“If they had not carried out the major refurbishment, the facility would break down and it would take PNG Power years to get it up and running again,” Duma added.
He also said PNG Power made that decision “because there were two power companies and Exxon Mobil who agreed to supply power during the major refurbishment”.
“Unfortunately, Exxon Mobil decided to withdraw its services, living a gap of 25 megawatts,” he said.
“At the same time, PNG Power also decided to close two power stations at Kanudi (Hanjung power station) and Moitaka (substation), which were gas-powered.
“Unfortunately, when you shut down such power stations, it takes a while to start them up again.
“So the decision reflected badly on the competence of the PNG Power management.
“We’ve had to fly in experts from Korea to rehabilitate those two stations. Moitaka will be operational in two weeks. Kanudi will be operational before Christmas.”
On the Sirinumu Dam which was affected by the dry weather, he said rain had begun again and the dam should be filling up and running again.
Meanwhile, Obura- Wonenara MP John Boito urged the Government to partly sell PNG Power to address the continuous power blackouts.
Boito said the power blackouts were affecting hospitals, schools, business houses and families.
“Instead of pretending that all is well, we must admit that we have a serious problem that we cannot solve by ourselves. So maybe start a partial sale of PNG Power, or (consider) privatisation,” he said.