Why Street Lights Keep Going Off? -Solution in Plain Sight

While the restoration of electricity to primary streets of Monrovia has been greeted with voluminous fanfare and euphoria in many quarters, just as others criticize President Weah’s street lighting initiative as tomfoolery because of the intermittent power blackout from the street lights, The Analyst is reliably informed that the public needs not to fret or worry, as the issue is being resolved in the shortest possible time – as early as next March, according to our sources at the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC).

Liberia generally has two peak seasons. Dry and Rainy. The dry season runs from November to May, and the rainy season from June to October. The Mount Coffee Hydro Plant which gets its power source from the St. Paul River normally does load shedding in the dry season. February is the usual peak of Liberia’s dry season.

According to our source, the LEC is load shedding right now. “All the turbines of the Hydro are not in use now because the St Paul Water level is low. This is a historical problem.”

LEC is therefore operating mainly from the Bushrod Island thermal plants, which have a maximum capacity of 30 megawatts.

“Maximum demand from households is 47 megawatts, so LEC is forced to load shed because there is a power shortfall,” our government energy source asserted.

The solution

But even as critics of the government and residents of Monrovia continue to wonder about the intermittent outages from the street lights, authorities from the LEC have informed this paper that the solution is right around the corner.

“This situation is solved when CLSG comes online in mid-March. LEC will take power from Cote d’ivoire to meet demand. This load shedding will affect the street lights. The fact that some of the street lights are off is because of this situation,” the source intimated, claiming that this is the power situation of the country that the CLSG lines are supposed to remedy, which has been an historic issue with Mount Coffee dam. “This is why current used to go during normal times!”

The CLSG (Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea) project will enable power exchanges between Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinée, thereby improving the supply of electricity in these post-conflict countries.

The power interconnection between Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinée (CLSG) is a priority project of the West African Power Pool (WAPP) that will enable power exchanges between the four countries.