Editor,

How disappointing to see electricity prices increasing again.

Even more disappointing is to hear of the plan to install 1mW of solar power which is probably an expense of around $20 million pa'anga to produce on average around 3% of total power and therefore no effect on the electricity price. For close to same sum of money one could build a plant using biomass to produce on average 15 times as much electricity and end up with a retail power price of around TOP 0.65/ kWh at current oil prices.

Even though the solar power plant is totally useless we will no doubt hear for some time to come how we are leading the way in generating electricity from renewable sources and we can all feel "good" even though only 3% of our power is coming from that source when it could be 50% from biomass at the same cost.

Hopefully we will hear from TPL that in fact the solar farm will

drastically reduce power prices. I would rather be wrong in my claims and have a lower power bill than be right with a higher power bill.

Peter Goldstern

M.Sc. Engineering

goldsternp [at] alum [dot] mit [dot] edu