IRC discusses DOMLEC tarrif review

McCaskey is the Executive Director of the IRC
McCaskey is the Executive Director of the IRC

The Independent Regulatory Commission (IRC) is presently holding a consultation on the Notices for Rule Making (NPRM) for Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), and Notices for Rule Making (NPRM) for DOMLEC’s Investment Plans at the Fort Young Hotel.

These NPRMs are part of DOMLEC’s impending Tariff Review for the next three years.

The IRC issued two new licenses, a generation License and a Transmission Distribution and Supply License to DOMLEC, both which became effective on January 1, 2014.

These two Licenses complete the process for aligning the regular framework for DOMLEC with the principles and intent of the Electricity Supply Act 10 of 2006 and established a regime of separate licensing for each of the business sectors of public electricity supply undertakings- generation, transmission distribution and supply.

Executive Director of IRC, Lancelot McCaskey, who was addressing the opening ceremony of the consultation, said DOMLEC shall within seven days of the commencement date (of the new license) submit a timetable for the filing of an application to the commission for a tariff review.

McCasey said the date for such filing shall not be later than nine months after the commencement date.

“The application for a tariff review shall be in the format set out in the Commission’s decision document, tariff regime,” he explained. “The tariff review should be conducted in accordance to the process set out in that decision. DOMLEC should have filed for a review of its tariff by the end of September 2014, but because general election was in the air, the commission decided to defer the application date to May 1st 2015 after consultation with both DOMLEC and the government of Dominica.”

He added, “In the interim DOMLEC and the IRC decided since the time given in the Electricity Supply Act for the processing of an application for a tariff review was a mere 60 days, we will try to get the contentious issues relating to tariff making…and so we started looking at the depreciation policy for DOMLEC.”

He stated further that DOMLEC’s most recent Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) and it’s five year investment plan will be discussed at the consultation.

McCaskey said the documents outline DOMLEC’s investments plan for 20 years from 2014 to 2033 and five years from 2014 to 2018.

 

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6 Comments

  1. Padna
    March 17, 2015

    No mater how irrelevant all this jargon sounds, at least Domlec knows someone is keeping an eye on them. However, with cost of fuel going down significantly there still isn’t significant lowering in rates to the poor people. Lower fuel cost has not done much!

    This IRC needs to do more, for us to afford lights, for Domlec to make profit and for enticing businesses to setup shop in Dominica with lower electricity rates. Fact that our towns and villages are so dark at night tells you the whole story of high electric rates……geothermal anyone??

  2. Harry Mack
    March 15, 2015

    Has anyone seen the set up of the IRC? Renting two floors of the Perky’s building in the heart of Roseau at a hefty price.
    Does it make sense to have an IRC with more staff than DOMLEC (proportionately) to regulate DOMLEC. The IRC has an CEO, ENGINEERS, HR, I saw a newsletter of the IRC and the only thing it had were photographs of a regional meeting, fairwell dinner to a retiring board member and a birthday greetings to the CEO.
    Dominica needs a Public Utilities Regulation Authority to regulate electricity, water, television and telephone. This would make more economic sense than to have an IRC that is obviously trying to make itself relevant.
    Which foreign investor will accept 11.4% return on their investment? Our little buyers and sellers multiply everything they buy in the U.S by 10 making more than a 100% profit, yet IRC want DOMLEC to make 11%.
    IRC is a waste of time and resources, the CEO should find a real job or go back into retirement.

  3. anonymous2
    March 15, 2015

    Haven’t heard a word on the geothermal for months. I guess that means no cheap power for DA any time soon.

  4. chowmien
    March 13, 2015

    What a load of undiluted hogwash!!! IRC is just another big sell out. They have been in operation about 10 years and withing that period Dominicans pay the most for lights. The only thing they do is reward Domlec with more and more licenses irrespective of their unrivaled incompetence and their unrelenting assault on the pocketbooks of the long suffering masses. Shame on them!

  5. rob
    March 13, 2015

    What about rate reviews for dowasco, Marpin, lime, sat’ and digicel??????

  6. Pedro
    March 13, 2015

    Domlec is minimizing all its expansion plans with the confidence of geothermal happening. Not such a good idea not to diversify its investment in new plant as there is no guarantee (actually it looks unlikely) it will happen or even be constructed on the time frame expected. This is unbelievable after a brand new plant ready to be constructed was scrapped in 2001, and the company chose to implement continued construction of smaller new and used equipment with high outage rates and greater costs per unit of installed capacities.. The downsides are of course increased running costs on old facilities not to mention reduced reliability and increases of outages and quite possibly load shedding. yes, that ugly word will return.

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