The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) says it will be stepping up its monitoring of maintenance works being done by Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), given the infrastructural damage done by Hurricane Beryl which suggested that there was some amount of inadequacy in the upkeep.

According to the OUR’s Manager for Engineering and Technical Analysis Courtney Francis, a prime issue is vegetation encroachment on equipment, such as power lines, which the JPS should ensure is routinely maintained as is stipulated in its licence and the Electricity Act.

Speaking at the Jamaica Observer Press Club on Friday, Francis said that on a routine basis, JPS is required to submit its generation maintenance schedule annually, which stretches over a three-year period. He said the power company is also required to submit to the OUR its transmission maintenance plans, which largely relate to routine maintenance and the major overhaul of plants.

He said that leading up to a hurricane, the expectation is that the utility company should start doing much more work in terms of vegetation control “because one of the major problems that we have observed on the system is vegetation impingement… and equipment failures.”

“And so, part of our capital projects… is to ensure that they have allocations to deal with that. And we have tried to monitor that over the last couple of years,” he said.

He noted, however, that the OUR has encountered issues with JPS not following through on its maintenance plans.

“At this moment, I can say that sometimes there are problems because even when they have proposed to do a certain stretch in terms of distribution lines, after the approval they might not have delivered based on what has been proposed. So what we plan to do is to try to step up, as much as possible, the monitoring arrangement to ensure that if you say you’re going to do this line, we have to also ensure that that is being done, because it can’t just be word on paper to say that you have done it; so we have to increase our surveillance where that is concerned,” Francis told Observer editors and reporters.

He said the idea of the OUR employing drone technology to strengthen its monitoring capabilities has been advanced, noting that this would improve the regulator’s efficiency as it would mean not having to be physically present everywhere.

Francis told the Observer Press Club he is not satisfied with JPS’s maintenance structure reflected in its reliability measurement each year which is part of the performance-based price setting mechanism the OUR utilises.

He said that since 2021 there have been three occasions in which JPS has been penalised for poor reliability, amounting to $450 million, with the dominant factor being vegetation infringement.

“So that is a significant financial penalty, and so we have done that calculation based on their failure to meet certain targets for reliability,” he said.

Francis noted, however, that the aim is not necessarily to impose penalties. “What we really want is performance, and so we want to use the regulation to drive performance.”

He said that the OUR’s assessment and analysis of JPS’s reliability performance over the last three to five years has revealed that there are a number of geographical regions, particularly rural areas, that are “just problematic” and have been listed among the 10 worst performing areas. He noted, however, that JPS has now indicated that it will start to look at these.

“The construct that we have, at the moment…is an average system arrangement. So customers in areas where they are located close together tend to have better reliability. So, like in Kingston and St Andrew [there is] better reliability than in some places like St Elizabeth. We don’t want that because everybody pays the same tariff, so the expectation is that you should get a similar service,” he said.

In the meantime, OUR Director General Ansord Hewitt pointed out that in its defence, JPS had indicated that it had a problem with maintenance crews.

“The previous president [Steve Berberich], one of the first discussions we had was about the issue of maintenance and the availability of crews. He told us that he got a commitment from the board to do all of these things and I met with [JPS Chairman] Damian [Obiglio] who told me that the plans were in place and in fact, we started to see the rolling out of some of those prior to the hurricane season, but clearly, we suspect it wouldn’t have been enough,” he said.

Hewitt noted that the issue regarding vegetation management may have to be dealt with through the formulation of policy, “because there is the responsibility of JPS, there is a responsibility of private property owners and there is a responsibility of local government. And I think that we’re going to have to take a look at how those responsibilities are distributed and the enforcement.”

“Because there’s a question of JPS coming onto your property to cut trees and there are limits on that, but there is a responsibility as a property owner to cut trees, but how do you enforce that? So I think we’re going to have to take another look at that going forward. And again, it’s one of the lessons coming out of this [Hurricane Beryl] that we’re going to focus on,” he said.