What’s The Relationship Between Water Supply And Electricity?
Especially in a country with Jamaica’s hilly terrain, the supply of water is heavily dependent on electricity. In order to get water to our customers the NWC has to pay over $200,000,000 per month for electricity alone. The dependency on electricity is not only seen in the high costs. In order to serve our many customers over many hills and across numerous valleys, the NWC has to operate nearly 500 major electrical facilities each day. Since it is neither economical nor feasible to have full standby generating capacity for all of these electrical facilities, water supply is affected whenever there is a disruption in the public power supply. Water supply may also be disrupted when there is low voltage or even single phase supply. Short disruptions in the public power supply may also have enormous impact on the water supply as the entire system may become drained of water, need to be checked and re-started, and gradually recharged.
Especially in a country with Jamaica’s hilly terrain, the supply of water is heavily dependent on electricity. In order to get water to our customers the NWC has to pay over $200,000,000 per month for electricity alone. The dependency on electricity is not only seen in the high costs. In order to serve our many customers over many hills and across numerous valleys, the NWC has to operate nearly 500 major electrical facilities each day. Since it is neither economical nor feasible to have full standby generating capacity for all of these electrical facilities, water supply is affected whenever there is a disruption in the public power supply. Water supply may also be disrupted when there is low voltage or even single phase supply. Short disruptions in the public power supply may also have enormous impact on the water supply as the entire system may become drained of water, need to be checked and re-started, and gradually recharged. A short electrical outage may therefore disrupt the wate
