Cash Power

There are approximately 34,000 people living on Pohnpei.  I would have said like 2,000 but let's not split hairs.  All the electricity on the island is powered by four giant rotting diesel generators.  Two of them are dead.  One of the working generators works sometimes.  As a result we get to participate in these really fun rolling brown-outs everyday.  My village scheduled outage is 9-12 which might actually be 8-2:30.

The Pohnpei Utility Corporation (PUC) controls the electricity, not unlike holding the Electric Company property in Monopoly.  All electricity is purchased on a pre-pay basis in a currency called "cash power."  You go to the little PUC building in town and walk in and buy cash power in whatever denomination you want.  Electricity costs $2.43 per kilowatt hour.  Local families often run a house on less than 10 kWh.  Menwai houses have thousands of kWh. I use about 8 kWh/day.

Running out of cash power does happen and is kinda like running out of gas.  Today when I stopped by Public Health to talk to Dr EJ he was examining a patient outside because the power was out.  I laughed so hard when I learned that the building had run out of cash power.

So when you buy cash power they give you a receipt with a 20 digit code to punch into your cash power box, and then it does a little song and dance.  The whole operation is very user friendly as demonstrated in the clip below.