Inos said CUC has successfully rehabilitated the old and troublesome generators at Power Plant 1 — the main source of electricity on Saipan — thus, there is no need to continue renting Aggreko’s 15 megawatts generators.
“We will take [them] down by September,” he said during a press conference yesterday.
The Fitial administration signed a deal with Aggreko’s Singapore office after the island experienced constant blackouts due to CUC’s malfunctioning power plants.
Aggreko is the world’s leading supplier of rented generators and its clients include the U.S. military camps in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The firm’s generators arrived in Sept. 2008 and have been operating since then enabling CUC to take down its troubled engines and have them repaired.
Inos said the Department of the Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs enabled CUC to fund the repair of its antiquated engines and buy the needed parts.
CUC’s one-year contract with Aggreko allows the parties to further extend it for six more months.
But Inos said the government is not exploring that option.
CUC expects to generate up to 40 megawatts by next month.
More than $15 million of federal funds were used and reprogrammed to fix CUC’s troubled power plants.
