JPS Co (Jamaica Public Service Company) Corporate Communications Manager Winsome Callum is certainly one chatty lady. After revealing in a Press Release that JPS co was effectively going to be deploying smartmeters, just that some of them were not activated as analyzed in my blog article entitled “JPS Co New Digital Meters are all Smart Meters - Winsome Callum's A Simple Twist of Fate”, she is again in the news.
This time it is for statements related to yet another reason why most Jamaicans still think themselves overcharged, despite the recommendation of J. Paul Morgan, Head of the JPS Co Review Team as per my blog article entitled “JPS Co cleared on Digital SmartMeters but chastized on 10-year backbilling - Future Plans from the Penguins of Madagascar”.
In the article “Day-Burning Street Lights Costing JPS”, published Sunday November 20, 2011, Gary Spaulding, Senior Staff Reporter, The Jamaica Gleaner, she conceded too that streetlights, whose bill is paid for by the Local Government arm of the Government of Jamaica, are one even in the daytime, wasting taxpayers money, quote: “We get reports every single day about malfunctioning street lights which is why it is difficult to respond to a general statement. There is a response mechanism where once the street lights are reported, they are logged and assigned, but I am not in a position to say what percentage are addressed within a prescribed period”
Clearly aware of the problem but not its scope, her further statements to the Sunday Gleaner are more revealing, quote: “Day-burning lamps indicate a failed/malfunctioning photocell. The photocells control the on/off function and are designed to fail in the "safe mode" that is to stay on, rather than to lose the service of the lamp completely.”
So the photocells need to be fixed. Straightforward GOJ contract to upgrade streetlights photocells and fix and replace bulbs with more efficient Fluorescent or LED (Light Emitting Diode) bulbs, thus necessitating that my article should naturally end here.
But what about the complete solarization of these streetlights, that is to say put them on Alternative Energy power sources, be it Solar Panels or Mini Wind Turbines, meanwhile making money from the excess being sold back to the JPS Co Grid?
This as we are now moving towards a new Alternative Energy Paradigm is now possible as Minister Clive Mullings of the Ministry of Energy, Mining and Telecommunications has made changes to the Energy Sector that should see coming of competition as described in my blog article entitled “Ministry of Energy Clive Mullings alters the JPS Co License for Energy Sector Liberalization - Jamaica and The Sun Salutes You”.
Possibly a means by which Google as a FDI (Foreign Direct Investor) or a Local Investor may provide Residential Solar Power to the Government of Jamaica Local Government as per my blog article entitled “Google invests US$75 million in Residential Solar PUC - Aliens in future Energy Market Shakeup”? My fingers are crossed, as an islandwide contract seems very likely here, in this JPS Co Corporate Communications Manager Winsome Callum’s The Bourne Supremacy (2004).