-At Mt. Coffee
Mr. Captan referred to the mini system that monitors electricity at LEC
Monie R. Captan, the head of Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC), has disclosed that the corporation is expected within the next two to three weeks to sign a contract awarding the solar power plant that will be constructed at the Mt. Coffee Hydro Plant.
Mr. Captan announced on Tuesday, June 18, 2024, at his office in Monrovia when he spoke to the media on the maintenance of the CLSG power outage.
Mr. Captan disclosed that if the contract is signed they will begin the construction of Liberia’s first industrious scale solar plant in the country.
He indicated that the solar plant will be 20 MW.
According to Mr. Captan, they are hoping that the project can be completed once it is signed within about 12 to 15 months.
“So, I think the first new power that will come onto the grid will be the solar power from this project that we are going to be doing that is currently financed by the World Bank,” he said.
Speaking on the maintenance of the CLSG power outage, Mr. Captan said that Liberia does receive electricity from Ivory Coast through the regional transmission network and is connected to the CLSG.
The LEC boss said the TRANSCO CLSG, the operator of the CLSG transmission network has informed the electricity corporation that the CLSG line will undergo maintenance work over the next two days.
Mr. Captan added that as a result of the CLSG maintenance, there will be no energy transmitted on the CLSG line for about three days beginning on Monday, June 17, 2024.
“So, we want to inform the public that the CLSG line will be down for maintenance from 7 AM to 5 PM daily and because of this it will interrupt the supply of electricity to our customers but am happy and pleased to say we are very fortunate that we have had some rainfall and that has increased the flow along the St. Paul River to Mt. Coffee; so, as a result of this we can get three bytes amount of the current which is making up for losses and energy that would have come through the CLSG,” he said.
He claimed that despite the CLSG line being off from Monday and Tuesday, June 17 and 18, 2024, Liberians continue to enjoy uninterrupted electricity supply.
He mentioned that they have a mini system at the LEC to monitor production and they presently have three tri-bytes at Mt. Coffee, one is generating 16.05, two is 18.87 and the third is generating 19.17 MW.
He maintained that the system shows that CLSG is generating nothing into the network and all of the electricity is coming from Mt. Coffee plus the LEC generators at Bushrod.
Mr. Captan also announced that presently the country (public) is serviced directly from LEC’s generation capacity and not from CLSG.
“It is a good thing and it marks the beginning of the rainy season and I think we can look forward to more stable electricity; of course the inflows will depend on continuous rainfall so, if we have a split of or long period of no rain we could drop in the inflow of whatever from St. Paul River but we expect that by the end of June the rainy season becomes more regular and the supply electricity improve,” he noted.
The LEC boss believes that the corporation is on a good course currently and they are planning for the next dry season and how they are going to manage the electricity issue.
He said everyone knows the challenges around the world and West Africa adding that “the heat wave we experienced is not being experienced in Europe and the United States and because of climate change we expect that this is going to be a continuous process and will affect Liberia.
Meanwhile, he emphasized that the next dry season will be a challenge for everyone as such it is good that they begin planning now and muster resources to prepare for the next dry season.
He stressed that for now, the rainy season is contributing to more stable electricity for the corporation.
Mr. Captan urged the public to understand that the crises that they faced in Liberia during the dry seasons are not unique to Liberia.
He continued: Many times, I read and follow criticisms, and what Liberians failed to realize is this problem is across the entire Sub-region. Power outages in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and other countries faced huge challenges and this is why we are working hard as a region to try to find a regional approach to resolving this problem because as individual countries it is very difficult to resolve the issues due to the amount of investment require and to resolve our problems is a question of a lot of investment that has to go into the sector”.
