The American Samoa Power Authority will benefit from maintenance financial assistance from the Department of Interior, Office of Insular Affairs.
Assistant Secretary for Insular Areas Nikolao Pula this week made available $380,447 to support two regional initiatives and one local initiative that support and bolster capacity for the power utilities in all main islands of the Pacific U.S. insular areas.
Pula said, “Electrical power is costly for residents in the territories and freely associated states.
“We do all we can to help them keep costs down through building local capacity and facilitating collaboration of ideas and expertise.”
$120,000 is provided for the *Professional Training and Apprenticeship Program of the American Samoa Power Authority to build and develop local engineers and technical personnel critical to the operations and continued success of (ASPA).
Funding for the current year is being matched 2 to 1 by ASPA and will fund 17 apprentices, including 3 power system engineers, 2 energy technology engineers, 2 water/wastewater civil engineers, 6 photovoltaic system technicians, and 4 electronic meter technicians.
This is the fourth and final year of the program, with $370,000 provided in prior years beginning in fiscal year 2014.
The Pacific Linemen Training Program is awarded $224,000 for the Yap State Public Service Corporation to provide 28 weeks of advanced professional certification training to 80 power linemen, a collaboration of power authorities from six insular areas: American Samoa, Guam, Majuro, Palau, Pohnpei and Yap.
Training this year will be especially critical for American Samoa, Palau and Pohnpei who are experiencing severe shortages of qualified power linemen due to attrition and retirement.
The training will include disaster planning workshops to help the islands recover more quickly from storms.
The Pacific Power Association is receiving $36,447 to fund the participation of 10 technical engineers from power utilities in the Pacific region at the 26th Annual Conference of the Pacific Power Association.
The meeting will discuss regional benchmarking, renewable energy resource mapping and integration, and disaster risk reduction initiatives.
Participants to the conference will come from American Samoa, Guam, Yap, Kwajalein, Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Majuro, Saipan, and Palau.
