The Giftland Mall has submitted a working proposal to the Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson, to supply excess electricity to the grid.
Roy Beepat, President of Giftland Mall and Giftland OfficeMax, told Stabroek News that the application which was submitted represented a proposal to supply the grid with 3 Megawatts of power during the day and 4 Megawatts during the night hours.
Responding via email Beepat stated that the recently opened US$30M mall has the capacity to supply 4.6 MW of power daily with the mall utilising just 1 MW during its operational hours.
He said that while the application is currently with the minister he would be unable to identify any of the proposed prices as these would depend on the granting of duty free fuel. He said that the two 2.5 MW engines were extremely reliable and could generate power 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Since the mall’s opening the onsite power plant has been its sole source of power generation.
Stabroek News had asked if the company was interested in selling power to the University of Guyana as well as the Caricom Secretariat, however Beepat did not make a distinction as to locations, only responding that the proposal had been submitted to the ministry, with no definitions as yet.
Prior to the completion of the mall which was commissioned and opened to the public in early July, Beepat had stated that the plant was the company’s largest investment. He had noted that it cost in excess of US$4M.
The plant currently runs one engine at a time with the other serving as backup; however should the proposal be accepted both would have to come on stream to supply the requir-ed amount to the grid.
During a tour of the plant in March Beepat told reporters that the energy produced could reportedly power up to 6,000 households. It was during this tour that Beepat had first spoken about potentially supplying power to neighbouring communities. He had noted, “It would be mainly for whatever the cost is, as you can imagine something like this is not cheap… So once we could cover those costs, we would be happy to supply the government and the people of Guyana.”
The plant is equipped with a fully automated control system and the engines will automatically start up and shut down depending on the demand load of the mall.
The employment requirement of the power plant is nine electrical engineers and 12 plant technicians. During the tour in March this staff complement had not been filled, but the Property Manager, Christian Bautista told Stabroek News that Giftland would be willing to partner with the University of Guyana’s Faculty of Technology to offer internships to students studying Electrical Engineering.
Beepat had cited the inconsistency and unreliability of the Guyana Power and Light Inc as the reason for preferring a community based ideology and self-sustainably for the Giftland Mall. He had noted that the mall would need to be fully prepared and equipped to generate and supply its own energy requirement and as such the power plant was a necessary component prior to the Mall being opened to the public.
