Shop Now - RezynTech
0 $0.00
Get Quote

Tag: electricity

SolarBuzz Jamaica > Blog Classic > electricity
News

Commitment Delivered? Phillips Responds To Promised Removal Of GCT On Electricity

May 28, 2012

 

Simpson Miller
Simpson Miller

Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter

DESPITE DECLARING in its election manifesto that it would “remove the general consumption tax (GCT) on electricity charges to ease the burden caused by electricity bills,” finance minister Dr Peter Phillips is insisting the People’s National Party (PNP) has delivered on its commitment to Jamaicans.

Phillips, the country’s finance minister, who served as campaign director for the PNP in the last general election, on Thursday announced in Parliament a 300 kWh threshold on electricity consumption above which GCT would be charged.

“A commitment was given in relation to GCT and by raising the threshold, we have in fact relieved all except the highest consumers of electricity,” Phillips said.

The PNP, in its manifesto, listed the rollback of GCT on electricity among 18 steps to full people power.

Yesterday, Phillips argued that 90 per cent of residential customers of the Jamaica Public Service would not pay GCT on their electricity bills. He said that the move by the Government would provide protection for the working poor and marginalised.

Previously, the threshold on electricity consumption was 200 kWh. Phillips also announced that the GCT on electricity would increase from 10 to 16.5 per cent.

In the meantime, Phillips argued that the increase in the rate of GCT would not impact businesses.

“All businesses can in fact claim their GCT payments back so that for businesses that are registered taxpayers for GCT, they are able to claim back their GCT payments, so on that basis, we have fulfilled a commitment that was given to the country,” Phillips said.

PM snaps

PNP President Portia Simpson Miller, now prime minister, repeatedly snapped at suggestions that the proposal for a rollback of GCT on electricity was not properly thought through.

“Everything we say from our platform they criticise,” she said, while adding that she has come to accept the criticisms of the “uncharitable and the unjust”.

“My platform will promise nothing that we are not sure we can deliver,” Simpson Miller said in St Thomas.

Yesterday, the minister of finance said “during the election campaign, we would not have a sense of how dire the public finances of the country was at the time”.

He added: “We have a simple choice, we could remove it, including at the highest end consumers, or we could try to rescue those same high-end consumers by rescuing Jamaica.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120526/news/news5.html

News Solar Buzz Featured

Install Owl Electricity Monitors For Efficient Energy Consumption

May 24, 2012

Brandon Virgo, energy audit manager, Solarbuzz Jamaica, shows us the statistics capabilities of the software that accompanies the Owl Electricity Monitor. - Photos by Gladstone Taylor/Photographer

You monitor your electricity consumption daily, yet your electricity bill continues to climb unabated. Perhaps you have tried extreme cost-cutting measures, but the frustration continues to mount. Your electricity bill is just too high!

Solarbuzz Jamaica can help you achieve a desired level of energy efficiency. They recommend installing an Owl Electricity Monitor in your home or business which allows you to see and monitor your energy consumption. The monitor is plugged into your breaker panel and shows you how much energy each appliance in your home or business is using.

For a one-time charge of $24,000 (including installation and GCT), within the first month, you are able to see at least a 20-30 per cent decrease in your electricity consumption. According to Jason Robinson, chief executive officer of Solarbuzz Jamaica, people who have installed the product become more conscious of the energy usage of each appliance and begin to cut back on their energy cost.

Monitor usage

“For each day of the week, you can monitor how the energy is used. The monitor can be connected to a computer, which can help you to analyse the data. By analysing the data, persons can see what is costing them the most and make changes,” Robinson said.

Jason Robinson, CEO of Solarbuzz Jamaica, explains how the OWL Electricity Monitor works. - Gladstone Taylor/Photographer

The company, which is focused primarily on providing solar energy, recommends that people try to cut back on energy consumption before making the bold step to install solar-energy panels. Robinson said, initially, energy usage in the home or business must be determined, and whether a solar panel can be installed at the facility.

“Depending on how much usage is accumulated per day, we can determine the size of the system. Once we know the energy usage, we can start putting together the equipment – including the panels, inverters, electrical – and the labour cost,” Robinson said.

Solar systems can range from $800,000 to $1.5 million for a small house, and depending on the energy usage, can also range from $4 million to $5 million. There is a 25-year warranty on the panels, and the other components can last up to 12 years. A minimum maintenance fee is charged each year.

Robinson also recommends that people have their electrical breakers analysed and cleaned regularly – at least once per year. He said energy can be lost when the breaker panel is not efficient.

“The breaker panel is like the engine of the home or business. It needs to be maintained. We label each panel for persons to know where each breaker is connected, so in case of an emergency, they will know which area in the house they are turning off,” Robinson said.

He said to add a solar system or even the Owl Energy Monitor, the breaker panel must be cleaned. Some, he said, were not installed properly, while others are crammed and become hard to service or clear. He added that many breaker panels are overloaded and that causes it to ‘trip’ out all the time.

Solarbuzz Jamaica also provides wind power solutions. They also install anemometers and let their clients know if the wind speed is sufficient for a wind turbine to be installed.

The company also installs pool and pond energy solutions that use up to 80 or 90 per cent less energy. The costs vary, but can go up to US$2,000 (J$174,000).

Contact Solarbuzz at

JPS News

JPS

May 15, 2012

JUST over one week ago, new Jamaica Public Service CEO Mrs Kelly Tomblin, having spent just over a month listening to the various stakeholders in JPS, particularly its customers and employees, revealed to the Observer Monday Exchange that she had never seen an electricity company facing such a difficult and complex set of challenges.

This was despite the fact that in her group she is normally brought in to deal with difficult situations requiring some form of turnaround. Indeed, many years ago, her first job in the electricity industry was at the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the United States, the scene of a near meltdown, and now part of the literature on how not to handle a crisis.

Mrs Tomblin was, of course, saying no more than the truth. In addition to facing legal challenges concerning some of its practices, such as back-billing, and its licence (the latter reflecting the overall legal and regulatory risk the company is facing), JPS has lost the trust of its customers, and even, Mrs Tomblin suggested, its employees.

One example of the former is that a group of Jamaica’s largest, most influential, progressive and innovative companies came together to publicly demand electricity competition. More generally, every householder and business in Jamaica, both rich and small, awaits with trepidation the monthly arrival of their electricity bill, over which many feel they have no control. Even JPS shareholders are clearly not happy with the many changes of ownership in just over a decade.

Despite the view of the man in the street that JPS is rapacious, a US$34-million profit on US$1.2 billion in sales is not particularly high, and could even be described as inadequate, given routine capital expenditure of US$40 million to US$50 million, and particularly against the huge increase in investment required over the next few years.

On the positive side, JPS shareholders have, according to Mrs Tomblin, the long-term view required to make the new investments. The decision to move ahead with the new LNG-powered electricity plant means the long-delayed decision on Jamaica’s future fuel source appears to have finally been made.

When Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) was originally mooted as Jamaica’s preferred fuel source over coal, there were legitimate concerns over the paucity of suppliers, particularly without a guaranteed supply from our Caricom partner Trinidad. However, the huge increase in the production of shale gas has collapsed natural gas prices in the United States, which now appears poised to become a major world supplier of gas.

In Japan and South Korea, the respective home bases for the current owners of JPS, all natural gas supplied for electricity generation comes through their own LNG terminals, suggesting they will have readily transferable expertise available to Jamaica in this still emerging area.

The starting point to rebuilding trust in JPS will be for Mrs Tomblin to continue to listen to the emotional pain of her customers, and empower her front line employees, all of whom know very well what is going on.

Mrs Tomblin appears to understand that, when in pain, neither customers nor her employees will care about the needs of JPS until it is clear that the business cares about them. Her current posture of emphasising listening, observing and acknowledging, rather than trying to explain or rationalise, reflects a necessary emotional intelligence that appeared to be missing from former top management.

She is off to a good start.

Read more:

News

Net billing to be implemented this month

May 9, 2012

THE Office of Utilities Regulations (OUR) has so far received 10 applications for licences from producers of electricity from renewable sources to engage in net billing thus paving the way for them to be paid for selling power to the national grid, energy minister Phillip Paulwell said last week.

Paulwell said the entities would be visited by the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) this week for the installation of new meters to measure the energy going to the grid, after which the OUR would recommend to him those which are to get licences in about two weeks.

PAULWELL

News Solar Buzz Featured

Companies Laud Expo Jamaica

May 3, 2012

Small and large businesses are lauding the success of this year’s biannual Expo Jamaica, which ran from April 26-29.

Organised by the Jamaica Manufacturers’ Association (JMA) and the Jamaica Exporters’ Association (JEA), in collaboration with JAMPRO, the four-day event was staged at the National Arena in St Andrew under the theme ‘Brand Jamaica’.

Hundreds of people turned out to view the offerings from the 200 companies showcasing more than 2,000 products.

First-timer to the expo, Solar Buzz Jamaica, won the award for Best Use of Technology in a Booth.

Chief Executive Officer Jason Robinson said they were quite happy with the response to their offerings on services and products to reduce and conserve energy.

“It really gave us a lot of exposure. In fact, as we speak, I’m just leaving the Ministry of Energy, which invited us to display the exact same expo booth set-up at the EEC (Energy Efficiency and Conservation) presentation today (yesterday) with Minister (Phillip) Paulwell,” said Robinson.

Robinson said since the expo ended on Sunday, they have been busy honouring commitments to clients, who had paid or signed up for energy assessments, as well as filling orders for residential and commercial clients for solar products.

Jamaica-Gleaner Continued

Related articles
News

‘Stop whining about electricity bills’

April 18, 2012

 

JAMAICANS no longer have a good reason to complain about high electricity bills, says Roger Chang, president of the Jamaica Solar Energy Association. A cheaper alternative is available.

“There is no valid reason for complaining of high electricity cost. Because there is an option and that option is solar panel systems. It will produce electricity at a ‘levelised’ cost of electricity of just around US10 cents per Kilowatt hour (kWh),” Chang told the Rotary Club of Spanish Town at the Police Officers Club in St Andrew.

“And when you factor in the other costs, the other tariffs, it will work out somewhere between another seven to nine cent. So you are looking at maybe US19 cents per kWh which is still less than half of JPS,” he said.

Insisting that renewable energy is the way to go, Chang argued that when one looks at the cost of electricity over the lifespan of 25 years it works out to about US10 cent per kWh. Consumers are now paying JPS over US45 cents per kWh. “Four times as much.”

However, Chang, who has been involved with solar panels since the 1980s, admitted that there is a place for the Jamaica Public Service.

“If we are talking in the context of solar panels as a renewable energy source, then you will need JPS to make the renewable energy source cost effective and viable. What we effectively have been doing is using the JPS as a battery, as a backup battery. So JPS is cheaper than you can buy and maintain our own batteries,” Chang said.

“You don’t use solar panel as a backup system. It is not cost effective that way,” he cautioned, adding, “It doesn’t make sense that you buy solar panels and batteries and invest hundreds of thousands on a backup system that you don’t use.

JPS rates have not gone down significantly for a very long time, partly because the OUR (Office of Utilities Regulations) has mandated that they should concentrate on making the grid more stable, with fewer power cuts.

“We don’t get power cut as we used to before,” Chang said. “So, a solar panel system with batteries as a backup is not worth it anymore.”

Under a complicated formula, JPS will soon start paying small power genera-tors between US20 cents and US26 cents for electricity they feed into the grid.

Read more:

News

GCT On Electricity

April 17, 2012

Political promises tend to electrify voters but they can be costly.

Our understanding is that the general consumption tax (GCT) on electricity generates approximately J$3 billion in revenue per annum for the Government of Jamaica.

The full and unconditional removal of GCT from electricity bills would therefore reduce gross revenues by a similar amount, further increase fiscal deficit pressures, and represent a further narrowing of the tax base.

The Government has not, so far, indicated how this revenue loss would be compensated, and given the urgent need to balance our fiscal accounts, we believe it is safe to assume that the lost revenue will need to be made up by some other tax measure.

In the absence of any such proposed tax measures, The Gleaner Council has decided to critically assess the fiscal and welfare effects of the revised basis of application of GCT on electricity being proposed by the Private Sector Working Group (PSWG).

GCT on Residential Electricity Bills

The PSWG proposals firstly contemplate an increase of the current rate of GCT on electricity from 10 per cent to an ‘across-the-board’ standard rate of 12.5 per cent.

Importantly, the PSWG also proposes a simultaneous 50 per cent increase in the threshold that would incur GCT from 200 kWh/per month currently, to 300 kWh/per month.

Of the 508,000 JPS residential electricity customers, approximately 51,000 of them are liable to incur GCT on their bills based on their consumption levels.

Under the PSWG’s proposals, that number would fall by 28,000 to approximately 23,000. Therefore, less than five per cent of JPS customers would continue to pay GCT on their electricity bills.

Put another way, based on current consumption patterns, 95 per cent of residential JPS customers would no longer pay GCT on their electricity bills.

The Government’s policy is that 100 per cent of JPS residential customers, irrespective of consumption, will no longer pay GCT.

Again, the Government is yet to articulate the mechanisms that will be imposed to make that policy change at least revenue neutral.

We can conclude, firstly, that for residential electricity consumers, there is very little difference in terms of outcomes between the PSWG proposals and the alternative of removing GCT from electricity altogether.

Second, since there is undeniably a high correlation between income levels and rates of electricity consumption, leaving GCT in place for those customers whose incomes afford them the opportunity of consuming large quantities of electricity could justifiably be argued to contribute to the overall progressivity and equity of the tax system.

By contrast, the removal of GCT altogether would have the opposite effect – rendering the tax system more regressive and less equitable.

GCT on commercial electricity bills

We believe that the case for continuing to apply GCT to the electricity bills of commercial entities is even stronger.

Given that GCT is a value added tax, the proposed 2.5 percentage point rate increase to 12.5 per cent will not impact the cost structures of commercial entities, as they will be in a position to claim the GCT input tax against output tax liabilities in their monthly returns.

The increased rate of GCT will also not affect the final price to consumers of products and services, given that the standard rate of GCT would be reduced by five percentage points, from 17.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent.

In the case of non-compliant commercial taxpayers, it is true that the GCT on electricity represents a part of their cost structure and any increase in the rate, as proposed by the PSWG, would add to their cost.

If we have rational buyers in the market for these products and services, then, all else being equal, they would buy from the suppliers with the lowest cost, which in this case would be GCT registered firms.

This point is worth restating – the removal of GCT from electricity would have absolutely no impact on compliant taxpayers or their customers; rather, such a policy would simply reward the non-compliant taxpayer (“he who plays by the rules gets the shaft”).

 

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120415/lead/lead3.html

1 … 14 15 16 17 18

SolarBuzz © 2023. All Rights Reserved.