By ISAAC NICHOLAS AN independent power providerm, Energy World has been engaged by state owned PNG Power limited to supply additional power in Port Moresby city to cut down on outages. This independent power company is also expected to take-over the Moitaka Power Plant and increase the current capacity to sell to PNG Power for distribution. Public Enterprise Minister Ben Micah told parliament yesterday that the capacity of supplying power in all major centres in the country is a major problem. Minister Micah also stated that there is also a proposal with the World Bank to build another dam system at Brown River (Mauro) in the next 5-10 years to supply an additional 200 megawatt of power for the city of Port Moresby. He said for Lae and other centres, an announcement will be made very soon on the independent power providers to serve them “That is one issue the new Board and management are looking at and at the instruction of the Prime Minister and myself as minister, to PNG Power, is to come up with some short term measures to immediately address the power outages in main centres like Port Moresby and Lae,” Mr Micah said. “I am happy to announce that the process of tendering out to independent power providers has commenced and I am happy to announce that two weeks ago PNG Power has appointed a company that has a proposal to set up a plant that will provide up to 80 megawatt of power and will get gas from domestic sources to set up a gas powered plant,” Minister Micah said. “In my negotiations with them now, I am impressing on this company to immediately see if they can take over the Moitaka Plant to immediately increase the capacity to 20 or 30 megawatt of power to alleviate the outages in Port Moresby.” “So in the short term, we are going to address Moitaka Plant, than this independent power purchase contract has now been issued to this company called Energy World that will now in the long term set up a gas-fired plant that will upgrade the power up to a certain level.” “We are also looking at increasing capacity up at Rouna Hydro because of deteriorating infrastructure at the Dam and also facilities.” Minister Micah said this during Question Time in Parliament when responding to questions from NCD Governor Powes Parkop on the constant outages and whether PNG Power has plans to increase power capacity. http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20130515/news10.htm
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