The Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) experienced a shutdown yesterday at approximately 07:55 hrs, according to the Guyana Power and Light (GPL).
According to a GPL statement yesterday, this was due to loss of generation capacity, which may have originated at the Kingston 1 Plant which was at the time supplying in excess of 11 MW. As a result of the simultaneous failure of the software that records operating parameters at this plant, more investigation is required, GPL said.
Incremental power restoration began around 08:15 hrs along sections of the East Bank Demerara and central Georgetown with continuation into all remaining areas in both counties. The last area was repowered at 09:38hrs.
Meanwhile, GPL said that the scheduled maintenance agenda for Sunday May 19, was successfully completed with maintenance work being performed on the company’s 69 kV bus bars at the Sophia Substation, the L5 transmission line linking the Kingston to Sophia Substations, and the 69 kV line (L10) linking the Sophia and new Georgetown Substations. This included the replacement of defective primary poles, transfer of high voltage mains and line hardware.
However, at approximately 7:58 hrs on Monday, May 20, broken secondary poles and downed 13.8 kV distribution lines along the Sophia Backlands resulted in a feeder trip, causing an interruption in the supply of electricity for customers from ‘A’ to ‘E’ Fields Sophia and North Sophia to Success, ECD.
The unfavourable ground conditions, coupled with the inclement weather experienced along the coast om Monday, hindered efforts to accelerate remedial work. As a result, while customers from ‘A’ to ‘E’ Fields, Sophia, were repowered within 90 minutes of the outage, customers from North Sophia to Success remained without electricity until 18:30hrs.
The section of the distribution network aback of Sophia that was affected on May 20, did not benefit from maintenance activities performed on transmission lines on May 19 as this fault occurred on the secondary 13.8 kV distribution network.
GPL is aware of the inconvenience caused by these outages and offers its sincerest apologies, the statement said.
