PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT

Monasavu Hydro Electric Scheme Half-Life Refurbishment Program
Replacement of the Fourth Main Inlet Valve at the Wailoa Power Station and
Maintenance to Network Infrastructure during the upcoming Easter Weekend

The Energy Fiji Limited (EFL) wishes to advise its valued customers that major maintenance works will be carried out at its Wailoa Power Station over the Easter weekend commencing from 10:00pm on Thursday 29th March, 2018 to 6:00am on Tuesday 3rd April, 2018.

As part of the Monasavu Hydro Electric Scheme Half Life Refurbishment works, EFL will replace the main inlet valve (MIV) on the fourth turbine at the Wailoa Power Station. This critical work needs to be carried out over a long weekend as this exercise is time consuming (with teams working around the clock in shifts) and the electricity demand will be lower than on a normal working day.

In order to carry out the replacement of the MIV, EFL Engineers will need to shut off the Wailoa Power Station. This maintenance will mean that EFL will not be able to generate electricity from the Wailoa Hydro Power Station.
There are four turbines at the Wailoa Power Station and replacement of the MIV on the first turbine was undertaken during the Easter weekend in 2016, the second during the Easter weekend in 2017. Similar works were undertaken on the third turbine during the Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday long weekend in the first week of December, 2017 and the fourth turbine replacement is planned for during the upcoming Easter weekend.

Also, as part of the Monasavu Hydro Electric Half-Life Refurbishment Program, maintenance works will be carried out on the Wailoa to Cunningham Road 132kV Transmission Line, and at the 132kV Vuda and Cunningham Road Zone Substations. In doing so, we will de-energize the 132kV Transmission line from the Wailoa Power Station to Cunningham Road Substation in Suva from 10:00pm, Thursday 29th March to 11:00pm, Monday 2nd April 2018. The 132kV Nadarivatu to Vuda transmission line will also be de-energised from 10:00pm, Thursday 29th March to 8:00am, Friday 30th March, and from 12 midday to 11:00pm on Monday 2nd April 2018.
During this outage, we will rely on the Diesel Power Stations at Kinoya, Deuba, Rokobili & Korovou to supply electricity to our customers in the Central Division from Matanipusi to Korovou. Power supply for our Western Division customers will be from the Nadarivatu Power Station (except during planned outage times above) and our diesel sets in Rakiraki, Vuda, Qeleloa, Nadi & Sigatoka.

During the period of the planned repairs and maintenance, the generation from the Monasavu Hydro Electric Scheme will not be connected to the load centres in the Western and Central Divisions of Viti Levu, resulting in a shortfall in generation capacity against the expected electricity demand. To cater for this shortfall in generation, EFL has been in contact with major customers, who have backup generators, requesting them to go off the EFL grid. EFL would like to take this opportunity to thank those customers who have agreed to go off the EFL grid, and looks forward to the support from other customers who have backup generators by going off the EFL grid.
With the available generators in the Western and Central Divisions of Viti Levu, and with the cooperation of major customers who will go off the EFL grid, we expect to supply all our other customers in the Central & Western Divisions as usual. However, customers may experience intermittent power supply interruptions in the event of a failure of any one of our diesel generating sets or any other unrelated network issues. EFL will do its utmost to ensure that these power interruptions are kept to a minimum.

ALL QUERIES CAN BE DIRECTED TO 132 333, for emergencies ONLY call 913.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EXERCISE WILL BE CARRIED OUT SUBJECT TO FAVOURABLE WEATHER CONDITONS. IN THE EVENT THE WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE UNFAVOURABLE, THEN THIS EXERCISE WILL BE POSTPONED AND OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS WILL BE INFORMED ACCORDINGLY.

EFL apologizes for any inconvenience that may be caused as a result of this planned exercise and seeks the cooperation and understanding of all our valued customers.

Hasmukh Patel
Chief Executive Officer