JPS eyes key areas to grow business, reduce costs

 

 

 

The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) says it is eyeing a number of areas to grow its business to reduce the cost to its customers.

 

This comes against the background of slowing growth between 2015 and 2025, where growth slowed from 2.5 per cent to being flat. 

 

JPS President Hugh Grant says through growth, the additional sales can be distributed over a wider base to result in a reduction of the price paid by consumers.

 

Mr. Grant says becoming a site for a data centre could ease some of the burden now being felt by customers.

 

"With the advent of AI, there are data centres throughout the world, and I think it's an opportunity for Jamaica to do more to attract data centres here - Jamaica and JPS - and I've already had some conversations with Flow and some other telecom providers. Just by order of magnitude, one data centre can be in the order of, say, 30 megawatts. That's in the order with our demand of near 6-to-700 megawatts. You can see that's near like 5%. So that right there is an opportunity to have growth in a dense way that I think will serve us very well," he reasoned. 

 

Mr. Grant says increasing investment in green energy and electrifying the transportation sector will also play a key role in cost savings. 

 

"If you think of share of the wallet in regards to energy, both in terms of, say, fuel prices and, say, electric consumption, what would it look like to electrify the transportation sector here in Jamaica? And in terms of the share of the wallet, the reality is the cost to charge is about 50% of what it would take to actually fuel and get the same range right now based on the EVs out there. So there's a lot more to be done in that space in terms of what can be done to stimulate electrification of the transportation sector," said the president of the light and power company. 

 

He was addressing Tuesday's sitting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee of Parliament.