JPS


JPS

2015 is the year Jamaica Public Service recorded the lowest costs for electricity in 6 years. The reduction in oil prices per barrel has led to an ease on the Jamaican public's pockets. The management of JPS also has plans for upgrade after many years operating below optimum efficiency. In some instances, JPS has infrastructure as old as independent Jamaica operating to serve Jamaicans. 
The real evidence of JPS improvement in service is the marked reduction in power outages. Well Jamaica's public power distribution is better than many countries like Nigeria, but that doesn't stop us from wanting more. And our desires have forced JPS management to try and satisfy us, the customers. JPS also tries to constantly implement technology that is new  to the market. In 2010, the RJR news article, 'Four new JPS wind turbines erected', reported that JPS embarked on a J$800million project to add 3-megawatts of Power to the national grid. So Jamaica and JPS started to reduce their energy dependency on oil (traditional fuel source) by increasing wind power harnessing. As of this year also another wind power project was launched. In Marlon Tingling's article, entitled 'Ground Broken for US$89 Million Wind Farm at Munro, St. Elizabeth', Energy Minister Philip Paulwell said,
“The price of electricity must come down. I have a view as to where it must get for Jamaica to become first world, and for us to be highly competitive. It won’t happen in three years, it probably won’t happen in five years, but my view is that we have to have a minimum of about US18 cents per kilowatt hour for us to achieve that target,”
It's with these projects that the management of JPS and the Government of Jamaica (GoJ) show the public that they are interested about them.  On the day of that speech by Minister Paulwell, he also announced plans for a 190-megawatt (MW) LNG project to increase base load energy supply. The following are a list of the power plants JPS has of the date of this post:

Customers should not only expect more base load power from JPS but more efficient systems. As we saw with NWC. The inefficient supply of water more than compounded the dissatisfaction customers felt with the lack of water in a drought season. In February this year, Dr. Vin Lawrence spoke at press briefing detailing the replacement of the Old Harbour Power Station, an old heavy fuel oil power plant, which produces a whopping 292MW of power with a 190-megawatt gas turbine generation plant. For the purpose of time we will just take it at face value that the power distribution in the said area will be upgraded to improve efficiency in the power reaching those who it matters to.

When writing this post, I looked for a past JPS bill for reference. I spent 5-6min searching; a process that would take seconds in the past, before I remembered that bills were now electronic; sent to my father's email. Its a faster service, and a cheaper service. Now customers have 1 less item to be charged for under the name 'Service Charge'. JPS' management seems to be aggressively making services more available to customers because they see where good customer service and satisfaction is more profitable for the country. They increase customer interaction with the modern technological tools available to them in this age.

On Social media they have a good following and they also use facebook along with radio broadcast to advise the public of maintenance outages. I have a heard a few persons express their satisfaction with such a move.For the most part it seems like the people are okay with the service. They have integrated technology well to make the lives of Jamaicans better. Its management is providing solutions and therefore it is hard to find complaints about the company this year as opposed to previous years. In 2014, they were still the people's worst choice utility company. A matter of fact in last year's consumer survey of utility companies LIME, now FLOW came out on top. In the survey, JPS received the lowest score (44 per cent) in customer satisfaction, customer care and product quality. The performance was largely based on customers' dissatisfaction with billing, which received a score of 27 per cent, from a maximum of 45 per cent. According to the survey, 75 per cent of JPS customers felt that light bills were not presented in accordance with meter readings. In the ranking of customer satisfaction scores, NWC came above JPS. In light of the positive efforts of JPS to diversify energy fuel sources, and the JPS e-bill program and the improvement of a few substations, may be their overall customer rating will go up.

After describing some of the technological implementations JPS' management has done, I think their efforts are effective. The level of service customers used to experience 5-years ago has improved. When I listen to the local 'talk show-calling programs', the complaints are very few about the light and power company. There is now more customer interfacing a variety of solutions offered to customers and more constant supply of power to Jamaicans. NWC on the other hand, it hard to differentiate the level of service 5-years ago with now.

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