$15m FEA upgrade

Ana Madigibuli
Wednesday, March 27, 2013

FIJI Electricity Authority is looking at spending around $15million in upgrading the under ground 33,000 volt network within the Central Division.

FEA chief executive officer Hasmukh Patel, in a meeting with business stakeholders in Suva last Thursday, said the upgrade was to basically improve the reliability of power supply from the authority.

He said $15million was a lot of money and they would like to give their customers some appreciation on the type of money that was involved in replacing ageing assets.

"I am talking about the $15million for the Central Division that we are anticipating to spend but of course we have to see on how we run these projects and that it was an idea that they have launched and we wanted to share," Mr Patel said.

"The other ageing asset that we have already started to refurbish and we would like to spend some $45million over the period of three years is the Monasavu hydro scheme."

He said they needed to spend a lot of money to improve the reliability of power supply because their customers needed to have that reliable supply.

"The Monasavu asset is also spending around $45million over the period of three years and we are changing a lot of things like the transmitter line, which needs a lot of refurbishment work," Mr Patel said.

"In the next two to three years, we could be spending close to $100million trying to improve the ageing assets so we can deliver better power supply to our customers."