Pacific Partners Email Update
Noisy, Expensive and Unreliable                                13 Sep 2011
Greetings!
Where I live, it's easy to take reliable electric power for granted.
But not in the Islands where power is noisy, expensive and unreliable. (Especially in rural towns.)
In the Solomon Islands, they have provincial centers with no electric power grid. That means the local clinic, police station, government offices, and stores each have their own diesel generator. These are mostly old machines, and poorly serviced.
Noisy, smelly diesels leaking fuel and puffing away outside the buildings!
In This TokTok
Noisy, expensive and unreliable
Your bill can also be unreliable
Please pray
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Diesel power generation -

Noisy, expensive and unreliable


Diesel generated electricity is very expensive. (For example we pay about USD $600 a month just to keep an FM transmitter on the air.)  

Small farm generator

This small generator provides power for farm machinery 

 

It's not uncommon for diesel fuel to run out. Then, the people are left without electricity until the next boat brings more fuel. 

  

Because of the noise, and in an effort to conserve fuel, generators are often switched off at night. People use kerosene lamps for lighting. (And of course, there's no point in having a refrigerator if the power goes off at night.)

Honiara (capital of the Solomon Islands) does have a town grid, but it is not able to generate enough power from the big diesels to meet demand. Therefore different parts of town have rolling power cuts, for an hour at a different time each
day.  

Large town generator

One of several large generators needed to power the main town. The noise is incredible 


For Gud Nius Redio listeners, that can mean missing two hours of the program in a day, as the station's power is switched off for a different hour to when their part of town is switched off.  

 

(Gud Nius Redio had a back-up power system that allowed the station to run on several large batteries, but the system needs replacing, and because the station is upstairs inside a building, we cannot operate a generator to provide back-up power.)   

Your power bill can be as 'hit and miss'
as your power supply  


With no local postal delivery, utility bills are mostly hand delivered and it's common to go a couple of months without receiving a bill. You can line up and wait to get your bill, but that is very time consuming. It's easier to set money aside each month until the bill eventually comes.
Tina Lemazi is Station Manger of Gud Nius Redio

Tina Lemazi is Station Manger of
Gud Nius Redio


Tina and the staff at Gud Nius Redio got a big shock recently when they got their power bill. It was twice what was expected - a wopping SBD $32,000 (about USD $4,000)!

We expect to pay about SBD $5,000 (USD $680) a month - I did say power is expensive!

Tina Lemazi (our Station Manger) investigated.
She found our neighbor in the building had been connected to our power meter and was using our power. The neighbor refused to acknowledge the debt, so Tina negotiated with the landlord to reclaim the neighbor's debt through reducing our monthly rent.
That still left us with a hefty bill so Tina asked the power company if we could pay the amount we were expecting (about half the bill) and pay off the rest from our savings on rent.
Peanut sellers at Honiara market

Peanut sellers at the Honiara market


The power company said no and cut off our power. (I understand their having this policy. Collection must be one major headache in the Islands.)

So, one our board in Honiara is writing to the power company CEO to explain that we are a not-for-profit and to ask if we can pay it off. And the Gud Nius Redio staff are holding fundraisers at the town market to raise money for the extra power bill.

Please pray for Tina
and for Gud Nius Redio

Please pray for our staff as they promote the station and raise funds at the market.
Pray for the funds needed to pay the power bill in full, so we can get the station back on the air.
And please pray for Tina too, as she deals with the landlord and neighbor and the power company.

 

"And we can be confident that he will listen to us
whenever we ask him for anything in line with his will.
And if we know he is listening when we make our requests,
we can be sure that he will give us what we ask for."
(1 John 5:14,15)    

Graham Carter 

Thank you for praying 

[ donate ] to help Gud Nius FM
get back on air in the Solomon Islands.  
May God bless you for your Partnership!  

 

Graham A Carter  [ email me ]
President of Pacific Partners