This was revealed in a letter sent to certain members of the community to be on a team of observers "to witness a part of or all of the procedure."
The testing is being done in response to concerns raised by residents about the rates being charged by the Grand Bahama Power Company (GBPC), said the letter, which was signed by Arthur Jones, director and vice president of the GBPA's Building and Development Services Department.
For the past two Fridays, a group of residents has demonstrated outside GBPC's office, protesting high power bills and the lack of reinvestment by the company.
According to the letter, the company contracted to conduct the testing, ITRON of West Union, South Carolina, will seek to verify that the in-service performance of the GBPC meters complies with the ANSI C12.1 Code for Electricity Metering.
Richard Pond, a quality control manager of ITRON Inc. is expected to arrive in Grand Bahama by October 19. He will meet with a team of observers, explain his meter testing procedure and report his findings.
The GBPC will supply some manpower to facilitate the procedure, while the GBPA will be responsible for approving the procedure and reporting the results of the exercise to the general public, the letter noted.
"The entire process from start to finish should last approximately five days, or terminate before October 25, 2009," it read.
The company will test a total of 200 Form 2S residential single-phase alternating current revenue watt-hour meters. 100 of those metres will be electromechanical and 100 will be electronic. The company will randomly select samples from GBPC's records.
The meter testing initiative was first announced by GBPA President Ian Rolle last week in an interview on ZNS TV-13.
"The Grand Bahama Port Authority has openly expressed our dissatisfaction with regards to their performance," Rolle said. "However, upon communication with the executives of the power company they also are meeting with consultants to find out what is going wrong in their infrastructure."
Rolle said the GBPA has challenged them to lower the cost of power for the island of Grand Bahama.
"We have ideas in terms of how to reduce the cost of power and we basically told the Power Company that we would actually benefit from the exercise... We will attract additional industry and everybody wins."
Nearly three weeks ago, Prime Minister Hubert Ing-raham also weighed in on the matter, saying that the government was concerned about the operation of the GBPC, and was considering whether or not the company should be regulated by the new authoritative body established by the government, the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA).
"We expected that they would have brought greater efficiencies to Grand Bahama's electrical generating supply and that has not happened," Ingraham said at the time.
"Secondly we are concerned that the original intent of Freeport was that the Port Authority would regulate the electrical supply operator and the water and the telephone operators here... Since that time, the Grand Bahama Power Company is now supplying electricity to the entire island of Grand Bahama."
Ingraham also noted government's concern about the fact that the GBPC has not reinvested adequate sums of money into its generation and distribution system.
"The company has over the years taken its profits out in cash rather than reinvesting it into their operation," he said.
The service delivered by the GBPC also leaves much to be desired, the Prime Minister said, with the number of outages occurring in Grand Bahama being "far in excess" of those in other islands which are serviced by government entities.
"As we all know, it is government enterprises that are supposed to be less efficient than the private sector and so the Grand Bahama Power has not given us confidence now that the private sector by itself is the answer," he said.
Addressing the complaints by residents of Grand Bahama about the high rates being charged by the GBPC, Ingraham said this should not be such a major issue since the company is able to access fuel at a lower rate than the Bahamas Electrical Corporation.
"They don't pay any customs duty or the rest of it, they are able to service their suppliers outside the area in bonded vehicles and so that ought to account for something in terms of electricity costs here in Grand Bahama," he said.
Acknowledging that there are standard profits that utility companies are expected to make, he pointed out that there are also standard sums of money that ought to be kept for reinvestment in upgrades of plant and distribution systems.
"When the decision is taken for URCA to regulate Grand Bahama Power these will all be issues that will become relevant," he said.
"It will no longer be an in-house operation where they charge you what they wish and make announcements when they wish and cut you off on Friday when you can't pay them until Monday morning and have to spend the weekend in darkness."
