Power outages in Lae threaten PNG's manufacturers
Updated
The competitiveness of PNG's manufacturers is being undermined by repeated power outages in the country's port city of Lae, according to its Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Presenter: Jemima Garrett
Speaker: Alan McLay, Lae's Chamber of Commerce and Industry's President
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McLAY: For the last five months, there's been an average of 61 hours per month of blackouts. If you bring that back to days, that's on average of in excess of two hours per day.
GARRETT: So just what sort of problems are these blackouts causing for business around Lae?
McLAY: The fact is that there is a thermal standby generation plant in Lae, so ideally when the power coming from the hydro-scheme at Ramu is down, then ideally the standby power would be sufficient, but it hasn't been sufficient for many years and so we go on a rotary basis of load shedding and this load shedding sometimes we're notified of when it will take place, other times it just happens. So if there is a load shedding arrangement, the companies can't just wait for the blackouts to occur. They have got to get some sort of generation themselves, self-generation. So most of the larger companies and a lot of the medium and smaller companies have invested in their own standby generators.
GARRETT: So, just how much has that cost business and how much is it affecting your competitiveness?
McLAY: Well that's right. If you've got two hours of blackout a day and you rely on, well firstly, if you haven't got standby generation, you can't afford or would not be competitive if you just miss out on those hours of manufacturing your goods, but secondly, if you do go into standby generation, well, firstly it's the cost of the generators, but secondly, it's more expensive to run your own generators than for the PNG power supply.
GARRETT: Is this problem getting to the stage where it is actually threatening PNG's export income?
McLAY: Well, it would possibly get to that stage, because with the power blackouts, you're getting a lot of power sparks, a lot of fluctuations and the other exercise I did was to obtain records from some of the manufacturing companies which reveal that there is quite a significant number of occasions when the PNG power supply either exceeds or is under the regular voltage of by at least ten per cent. So when you are getting spikes like that, then it can cause damage to the electronic gear, which is very expensive, particularly in a place like PNG, where it is hard to replace. There are small number of parts available, so normally this would mean downtime of machinery and maybe even bringing in experts from overseas to reinstall some of the delicate parts. So it's getting to stage where it's affecting the competitiveness of our businesses here in Lae and PNG.
GARRETT: What does the Lae Chamber of Commerce want to see done to improve the power reliability around Lae?
McLAY: Don't get me wrong Jemima. We've had a particularly good relationship with PNG Power. They have tried to advise us when there will be problems. I mean there is a lot of times when there are natural events which are beyond their control, but they have been advising us when there is likely to be blackouts so we can be prepared. But they have advised us that they are going through maintenance programs, they are going to upgrade their machinery and equipment. We would like them to concentrate on not only upgrading equipment, but also on trying to stop the irregular supplies and stop these power sparks and so on. There has got to be some controls for this and also for the backup power system to be sufficient to cater for the total needs of the city, rather than relying on the circular supply of the power.
