The Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) says its attention has been drawn to numerous reports in the media claiming that power imported by LEC from La Cote d’Ivoire through the CLSG has been cut off.
LEC continues to receive power from La Cote d’Ivoire through the CLSG at the contracted capacity of 27MW.
The contracted capacity is the amount of energy CI Energies agreed to supply LEC under the Power Purchase Agreement.
LEC has informed the public on several occasions that the contracted capacity from CI Energies will not meet LEC’s peak demand, which currently exceeds 70MW.
Peak demands are periods when the highest energy consumption is experienced and in the case of Liberia, it lasts from 6:A.M to 9: A.M and 6:P.M to 11:P.M and during off-peak periods, LEC can meet the energy demand.
To mitigate the gap created during the peak period, LEC said it generates additional power though its thermal and hydropower plants and that additional power generated by LEC is approximately 47MW, which provides a combined capacity with CLSG of 74MW.
However, due to the exceedingly high cost of fuel, LEC has limited the use of its thermal plants to produce more cost reflective energy and that the minimum resultant gap is mitigated through load shedding.
The LEC said in the coming rainy season, it will not need the full contracted capacity from CI Energies and therefore it has already booked 50MW capacity for 2024 from CI Energies in anticipation of growth in demand, while at the same time deploying 35MW of solar energy.
LEC assures its customers that it will continue to provide reliable electricity despite its current challenges and as promised, it can easily be observed that the LEC continues to fulfill its promise of more reliable electricity than what was experienced during last year’s dry season.
The LEC further said it is collaborating assiduously with key stakeholders and partners to put into place strategic plans to improve the electricity sector as we strive to increase national access to electricity.
A fortnight ago, the Management of the LEC in a late evening release informed its valued customers through the Liberian media that due to unforeseeable challenges with power generation in Cote d’Ivoire, CI Energies; the Transco-CLSG Transmission Lines
The LEC’s pronouncement that the electricity supplier through the Transco-CLSG transmission lines was no longer able to supply Liberia with electricity beyond contracted capacity was apparently where the public including the media’s attention and emphasis were drawn.
The LEC then maintained that the impact of such an unfortunate development is that the Corporation may not be able to meet domestic peak demand, which is currently 74 MW, well above the current generation capacity of the corporation.
It was hopeful that water inflow into the Mt. Coffee dam would improve over the coming days to enable the full operation of the dam but announced that until then, the LEC may be required to undertake selective load-shedding to match electricity demand to the available capacity.
It went further to inform the public that communities affected by any such load-shedding will experience outages for six to 12 hours.
Meanwhile, the LEC assured that the public will be informed daily as it goes through this period before the rains and requests the public’s cooperation as it concluded by sincerely expressing regrets for any inconvenience these operations may cause its valued customers.
