Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The continued global drop in fuel prices has — again — contributed to the drop in the cost of diesel fuel for electricity in the territory, resulting in a decrease in the “fuel surcharge” that the American Samoa Power Authority imposes on its customers.

In a brief statement on Tuesday this week, ASPA announced the “20% drop in fuel surcharge rate” for the August 2020 billing, saying the drop in the cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for the August 2020 bill is due to the continued drop in price of fuel over the last couple of months.  

“As the cost of diesel fuel drops so will the cost of the electricity,” said ASPA noting that since March 2020 to the current billing month of August 2020, “we have seen a 20% drop in the fuel surcharge" portion of the electric rate, from $0.23185 to $0.18562.”

The current Residential per killowatt-hour rate for August 2020 is $0.28302 compared to March 2020, which was $0.32925.  

“With the uncertainty of the fuel markets and the current COVID-19 pandemic, we hope the rates continue to drop,” the statement says. “Any savings from drops in the price of diesel fuel will be passed on to our customers.”

Meanwhile, ASPA announced last week that three new 3 Megawatt Cummins Diesel Fuel Engines in the Tafuna Power Plant are now in operation. These will replace the containerized units ASPA has been using for the past year while the Tafuna Power Plant was being remodeled.

According to ASPA all the work was done in-house by its staff “as the borders were closed due to COVID-19. ASPA is very proud of the work done by our Power Generation team to get these engines up and running.”

The three new engines will supply enough power to cover the load for the west side of Tutuila, while the ASG semi-autonomous agency is investing in two more GE Engines similar to the ones in Satala to fully supply the Tafuna Power Plant for any growth potential.  

ASPA says the old containerized units will be placed at critical facilities to help keep them running if the ASPA system should be off line due to a disaster.

The three new engines are expected to resolve any long term outages due to limited supply. Furthermore, these engines will work in parallel with ASPA’s solar panels currently in operation and the 20 MW PV solar project that we will be put up soon in the Tafuna and Malaeimi area.