Load shedding to continue into July though it starts easing by next week

Honiara will continue to experience scheduled load shedding until the end of July or early August though Solomon Power revealed today that the rationing of power would be eased as of next week.

Chief Engineer and Acting CEO of Solomon Power Martin Sam told the press that the current power problem in Honiara came about because four of their large generators are still out of service, which has significantly limited their generation capacity to just 12 megawatts against the demand for 16 megawatts.

He revealed that Solomon Power is working hard with their suppliers and partners to restore the generators eventually to ending the scheduled load shedding.

Furthermore, Jeremy Maneipuri, the Deputy Chief Engineer Generations and Outstations, said based on their efforts to restore the generators the cease of load shedding could happen in late July or in the worse case early August.

According to Maneipuri, besides the four major generators that are currently down, the shortage of generation is also due to three of their other generators have been de-rated (not operating at their rated capacities). 

However, he said they have managed to partially resolve one of the de-rated machines over the past weekend and it’s operating at two megawatts with is an additional megawatt capacity of generation, which will ease load shedding.

On the other de-rated machines, Maneipuri said that they have been in contact with their maintenance service provider abroad and they would attend to it this month and have the de-rated issues resolved by July.

“With the fixing of the de-rated machines we expect more easing in the load shedding schedule,” he said.

 On the four generators that are out of service, Maneipuri revealed that only today they have identified one of the issues with one of the gen sets at Honiara Power station. He hoped that the issue would be resolved next week, which would further ease load shedding.

He said they have started the overhaul work in advance as agreed by their overseas service provider to shorten the waiting period.

Maneipuri stated that they hoped to complete the work at the end of July.

 “With the return of the generator we expect possibly load shedding to cease at the end of July or worse case early August,” he said.

He said the rest of the generators are expected to be up and running at the end third quarter of this year.

Solomon Power on a daily basis issued scheduled load shedding with most parts of the city experiencing between two to four hours without power. Many have expressed their frustration against Solomon Power.

The State Owned Enterprise today apologized to its customers for the load shedding.

News@SBMOnline2023