The V.I. Public Finance Authority governing board Friday opted for Puerto Rico-based RG Engineering to carry out the Federal Emergency Management Agency-funded prudent replacements of the St. Thomas and St. Croix power plants.
V.I. Disaster Recovery Office director Adrienne Williams-Octalien reported to board members Friday that ODR received three bids after issuing a solicitation in June, and two met ODR’s evaluation criteria. RG’s bid for design and pre-construction services came in at $6,814,913 for the Randolph Harley power plant on St. Thomas and $6,849,913 for the Richmond power plant on St. Croix. The rejected bidder, a joint venture dubbed Power Solutions VI, bid $31,824,600 for each project.
RG Engineering’s total estimate for the power plants’ replacement amounted to $313,699,826.
Williams-Octalien said RG’s “knowledge of the territory was evident in their proposal, and they highlighted permitting challenges and all of the other requirements that will have to be overcome in order to put these generators back into the facilities.” Later, she explained that the solicitation was done through a “progressive design-build approach” to keep the projects on schedule and within budget.
Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., who chairs the PFA board, emphasized that “when we talk about fixing WAPA, these are two new power plants in addition to all the solar, wind, reconstruction that we have already done, undergrounding, composite poles,” the latest Wartsila generators and the government’s purchasing of Vitol’s propane infrastructure.
WAPA, he said, is essentially getting free power plant replacements.
On Friday, the PFA board also approved a renegotiation of the government’s existing $150 million line of credit with FirstBank Puerto Rico, which the government sought in order to “provide funding needed to advance disaster related recovery projects reimbursable through federal funding and other disaster related projects and to provide funding for the payment of vendors, retroactive wage payments and to address the other critical needs of the territory that due to cash flow deficiencies have not been able to be addressed in a timely manner,” according to the PFA.
“So what we wanted to do is we wanted to lower the amount of our guarantees, our cash guarantees, for this in order to free up some cash that we have as a government — some of those funds and proceeds from lawsuits and whatever — in order to be able to spend our money now for projects and everything,” Bryan said Friday.
