GSEP Continues Transfer of Skills on Tariff Structure in the Pacific Islands

August 21, 2014: With a strong commitment to transferring skills sets and know-how to counterparts in developing and emerging countries, the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership (GSEP) has partnered up once again with the Pacific Power Association (PPA) to host a second technical workshop on tariff structure development in the region, this time for the Northern utilities, from August 18-22, 2014 in Guam.

Led by GSEP member Kansai Electric Power Co., the workshop is designed to support the Pacific Island countries in the development of tariff structures that can help promote their sustainable development and the use of renewable energies on the Islands. “Appropriate tariff design is critical to balancing the equation of securing an affordable electricity supply for customers as the share of the renewables increases, while at the same time ensuring commercial viability for the investors in order to create enabling conditions for further investment in this sector” explained Ms. Martine Provost, Executive Director of GSEP.

For Mr. Gordon Chang, Deputy Executive Director of PPA: “The work GSEP has been doing with PPA to improve local skills since 2005 has been great. The content in the workshops is always of high calibre and suited to our needs as small islands. The joint GSEP-PPA workshops have increased local utilities confidence in better managing different aspects of their business that in turn allows us to give a higher quality of service to customers”.

This workshop together with the one held in May in Fiji have reached a total of 37 managers and engineers from the Pacific Islands utilities. These two workshops support the United Nations Year of Small Developing Island States. As a unique pool of expertise in the electricity sector, GSEP has been active in the region for close to a decade, leading human capacity-building workshops in different aspects of energy project development and implementation in the Pacific Islands. Over the years, 240 managers and engineers from 20 utilities in the region have attended a total of 12 GSEP workshops. For utilities in the northern hemisphere, this represents an approximate of 101,200 registered customers that have benefitted from this transfer of knowledge and development of local capacities.