The Storm That Does Not Pass

In April, Super Typhoon Sinlaku tore through Saipan, and Guam's lineworkers went north to help. For weeks they worked fourteen- to sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, on a neighbor's island.¹ They were home by the time Super Typhoon Bavi brushed Guam in July. Crews worked twelve- to sixteen-hour shifts and had 99 percent of the system back within eight days.¹ When lives depend on it, this island moves fast.

Now a slower storm has arrived, and this one does not pass.

My August power bill was $377.37, about $130 more than usual. I have since nudged the thermostat higher. For many families the choice is harder. In September, regulators raised the fuel charge again, to about $407 on the average monthly bill.² The commission's judge warned that GPA cannot yet afford October's fuel shipment, about $51 million.²

Demand for power peaks between six and ten at night,³ when the air conditioner hums, the rice cooker clicks, and children finish homework under the kitchen light. By then, Guam's solar panels have gone dark.

A family that switches off the air conditioner to cut the bill pays in other ways. The heat and damp settle over homework and hard decisions alike. In a study of ten million American students, hot school days reduced learning, and air conditioning largely offset the loss.⁴

The trouble starts half a world away. On September 11, drones damaged Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, the route built to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, and it was shut down.⁵ GPA's diesel had cost $105 a barrel in March; the April cargo cost about $226.⁶ To keep buying fuel, the utility may borrow up to $70 million.⁷

We are borrowing money to burn it.

Relief is the first instinct, and a decent one. In March, a senator proposed $32.2 million for six months of $100 power credits.⁸ A family that cannot pay this month's bill cannot wait for a ten-year plan.

But relief only bails water from a leaking boat. It does not patch the hole. GPA spent about $335 million on fuel in fiscal 2025, two-thirds of its revenue,⁶ and it buys that fuel from suppliers in Asia.⁹ Relief money follows the same route out. Money spent on solar panels stays on the island, and whatever a family saves can go to better food, or to a first trip off-island for a child who has never left.

Guam has 455 megawatts of oil-fired generating capacity and 85.3 megawatts of renewables.⁶ The utility's newest solar-and-battery contracts were bid under a cap of about 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, batteries included,¹⁰ well under the new fuel charge, and that price won't jump the next time a pipeline burns.

Solar has a real limitation. The sun goes down before demand peaks, and on a small island, too much midday solar can unsettle the grid.¹¹ Batteries answer both problems. GPA's awarded solar projects include 108 megawatts of four-hour batteries, and the utility is seeking bids for 90 megawatts more,^{6 12} to save midday power for the evening instead of wasting it.¹³ Four hours is roughly six to ten. Those batteries are the family's evening, bought in daylight.

Families pay for fuel twice, on the power bill and at the pump. Regular gasoline was $5.07 a gallon in March.¹⁴ After a 25-cent jump in a single day this month, it is now $6.479, close to the highest price Guam has ever paid.^{15 16} That is $1.41 more per gallon than in March, or about $21 more to fill a fifteen-gallon tank. Fix only the power plant and the other half of the problem is still sitting in the driveway.

Last year, pizza delivery and ride-share drivers told Guam's charging operator they could not make a living on public chargers that took ten hours or more for a full charge.¹⁷ Those are working families asking to be let into the future. Electric cars turn more than three-quarters of the energy they draw into motion; gasoline cars manage 12 to 30 percent.¹⁸ Charged at night, they still run partly on oil. Charged at noon from the sun, they need none.

A family paying $147 more a month for power than in January will reasonably ask how it could afford an electric car.² It shouldn't have to go first. Guam's rebate tops out at $3,000, covers only new vehicles, and paid out 24 times in fiscal 2023.¹⁹ Start with the vehicles that never stop moving (government cars, buses, taxis, ride-share and delivery fleets), then extend the rebate to used cars. Roads suffer too, since village road repair has partly depended on fuel-tax revenue,²⁰ and every gallon we stop buying shrinks that stream.

So why is Guam still running on oil? GPA has not been idle. It held the fuel charge flat for months after the war began,²¹ spending cash reserves before asking customers for more,⁶ and it has committed to 50 percent renewable power by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040, five years ahead of the law.¹³

Waiting until 2040 is too late. Fourteen more years of oil means fourteen more years of bills written in the Strait of Hormuz. South Australia got 1 percent of its electricity from renewables in 2007 and more than 75 percent in 2025, and it aims to match its whole annual demand with renewables by 2027, with gas kept as backup.²² Guam's approved projects could bring renewables to as much as 46 percent by 2028.¹ Getting the rest of the way by 2030, with oil kept only as a spare tire, will take wartime speed. It is hard. It is not impossible.

Good work has kept losing to the clock. Of the 100 megawatts of solar a consent decree required, a bid protest and a failed contractor left only 60 built.⁶ This summer, Ukudu's steam turbine was out nine weeks instead of the planned two and burned about $28 million in extra fuel before it came back.²³ I don't see a villain in any of this. I see capable people working inside a system with no deadline anyone has to meet.

Setting that clock is the job of the people Guam elects. The utility commissioners could require a public dashboard for every energy project, listing milestones, a named official, and the reason for any delay. The Legislature could move the legal finish line from 2045 to 2030, and give protests on critical energy projects firm deadlines so a legitimate grievance is heard in weeks, without taking away the right to protest. It should also settle how roads will be paid for as gasoline sales fall. The Governor could put solar on school and agency roofs, electric vehicles in public fleets, and fast chargers where drivers need them. GovGuam paid GPA $70.4 million in fiscal 2024,⁶ money that could be spent once instead of every month. Business owners, who pay GPA about as much as every household combined,⁶ can do the same.

The rest of us have work too. When the Public Utilities Commission held three hearings on the last base-rate change, very few people came.²⁴ Showing up won't change the price of oil, but it tells the people who set the clock that someone is watching. The elected utility commissioners meet every month at the Gloria B. Nelson Public Service Building in Fadian.¹ Shift what you can out of the evening peak. And at candidate forums between now and November, ask every candidate what they will do in their first hundred days to put Guam on renewable power by 2030.

Before any of us asks what we, our village, our agency, or our party can gain, the first question should be what every family needs. The power plant doesn't know who is a Democrat or a Republican, and the tanker doesn't care who is Chamorro, Filipino, Chuukese, Korean, stateside, or military. When the lights go out, they go out on every street.

Tonight a family will sit at a kitchen table with a bill it did not cause and cannot control. They deserve a cool room for the homework and enough left over for a fuller table, not another round of bailing. This year, Guam's crews went house by house until the lights came back. This storm asks the same of the rest of us, each taking the section in front of our own house, whether that is a roof that could hold panels, a hearing, a question at a forum, or an evening hour without the air conditioner running.

It is waiting.