By NEIL HARTNELL - Tribune Business Editor

The Bahamas Electricity Corporation would have lost over $50,000 per day, and its contractor $1.3 million per month, had the Court of Appeal granted opponents of Abaco's Wilson City power plant their sought-after injunction to halt construction until their Judicial Review action was heard.

Kevin Basden, BEC's general manager, in an affidavit filed to support Friday's Court of Appeal hearing, in which Responsible Development for Abaco's (RDA) appeal for an injunction to halt construction work was refused, alleged that 60 per cent of building work was now completed. The state-owned electricity supplier had also paid MAN Diesel, the plant's contractor, some $50 million on the generation contract.

Describing the alleged effects if Wilson City construction work was halted for one month, Mr Basden claimed: "Plant completion would likely be delayed by two or more months. Such a delay in plant completion, which is now projected for July 2010, would push the completion past the summer peak, which is a critical time for generation."

And he added: "Each one day delay in plant operation would result in a cost to BEC of $43,000, due to inability to complete construction activities.

"Each one day delay in plant completion would result in a cost to BEC of $7,200 due to fuel difference costs. It should be noted that the fuel costs do not include customs duty, which is expected to be reapplied to BEC imports in July 2010, nor do they make allowance for the efficiency differences between the new and existing generators."

Mr Basden alleged that further problems from a work stoppage would have included the demobilization, then remobilization, of the construction workforce, and all the logistical issues resulting from that. Then there was the cost of storing the Wilson City generators in the US, as there were no suitable storage facilities in the Bahamas.

"I am advised by Don Christie at MAN Diesel and technical staff in BEC, and believe, that the financial cost to his company of a one-month delay in the construction of the plant would be in the order of approximately $1.3 million," Mr Basden alleged.

"Furthermore, during the demobilization process, accommodations that would have been occupied by approximately 70 foreign workers would not be utilized, representing in loss of revenue for the local Abaco community in the order of $108,000 per month. There would also be job losses for local Abaco residents directly employed by MAN Diesel, who presently number 54 persons with salaries of approximately $157,000 per month."

Shortfall

With Abaco set to experience a continued shortfall in power generation, and load shedding, in WilsonCity's absence, delaying the plant's construction would have impacted the "quality of life" for the island's residents and visitors, and impacted the development of its economy and tourism industry.

As a result, Mr Basden summed up BEC's and the Government's objections to an injunction as being "the negative impact any delay in construction would have on the statutory duty of BEC to provide electricity to its customers in Abaco, who are already enduring substandard supply, and the serious economic losses to BEC and MAN Diesel, and to the economy of Abaco".

BEC had some 8,000 customers, of whom 6,253 were residential, in Abaco and its surrounding cays. Mr Basden said they were currently supplied from the Marsh Harbour power plant, which consisted of six trailer set generators, while the smaller Sandy Point power station had two such generators.

The BEC general manager alleged that the Marsh Harbour plant's generators were "small, inefficient" and been manufactured up to 40 years ago. "To put the age of these machines in perspective, the lifespan of BEC generating plants is only 20 years," Mr Basden added.

"At present, the average availability of power on Abaco is only 17 megawatts, whereas peak demand averages about 24 megawatts. The units at the Marsh Harbour Plant must all be operated simultaneously to meet existing demand, and on occasions, Sandy Point must also be run.

"In short, BEC is simply incapable of meeting the peak load demand at Abaco with the existing generating plant at Marsh Harbour and its operation at Sandy Point, and there have been many outages as a result of this."

The problems had been compounded by BEC experiencing an average customer growth of 2 per cent per annum for the last seven years, Mr Basden added, with peak energy consumption up by 60 per cent.

"There were 191 feeder outages resulting from generation problems at the Marsh Harbour Plant for the year ending September 2009, resulting in transmission lines being out of service for an aggregate period of more than 364 hours," the BEC general manager added. "This translates into 108,631 consumer-hours of outages when the total number of affected consumers is taken into account."

Mr Basden said the Marsh Harbour plant's problems had been exacerbated by a November 20, 2009, fire that destroyed the switchboard for several generators.

The plant was less half a mile from, residential communities, with fuel having to be transported to it daily, and the 35-foot tall smoke stacks were not high enough to disperse the smoke effectively.

While Snake Cay had been eyed as an alternative to the Wilson City location, the Government had decided it was more suitable for tourism development.