The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) incorporated continues to miss key benchmarks in the delivery of service including in both the frequency and duration of blackouts.
During an annual review of eight benchmarks in GPL’s Operating Standards and Performance Targets (OSPT), company executives told the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) that they failed to reach most of their projected achievements in the year 2018.
GPL had committed itself under the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) to delivering no more than 70 blackouts during the year to households. Its actual result was 106.4 blackouts a mere 6.3 of which were planned. This would mean that citizens on the average sustained 36 more blackouts over the year. There were however only 12 shutdowns of the Demerara-Berbice Inter-connected System (DBIS) a significant improvement from the 25 shutdowns in 2017.
The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) which measures the actual hours of blackout was projected to reflect no more than 80 hours per citizen instead it recorded 112.6 hours.
Additionally the company continues to miss the mark on overall systems losses. This is divided into technical and non-technical losses, the former describing the bleeding of power from decrepit transmission and distribution infrastructure and the latter encompassing areas such as theft and tampering with meters. For 2018, GPL had set itself a target of limiting losses to 26.6% of dispatched power and it ended up with a figure of 27.7%. Technical losses represented the majority at 14.98% while non-technical losses represented 12.76%. While answering questions company representatives revealed that theft accounted for approximately 5% of non-technical losses.
GPL has however recorded these numbers as a significant reduction of losses since total losses were reduced by 1.86% from the previous year when 29.6% was recorded.
According to the company this improvement is as a result of an upgrade of over 300 km of low voltage and primary network, load balancing on the low voltage and primary network, installation of a more secure network to safeguard against electricity diversion, replacement of over 30,000 meters with smart meters and detection and energy recovery from electricity diversion.
Performance they argued will continue to improve in 2019 as the company continues with these efforts as well as completes a Field Audit of all Maximum Demand and Small Business Installations, including downloading and interpreting of meter logs and complete site analysis for CT/PT rated meters; upgrades of Maximum Demand Installations through meter Replacement and Expansion Infrastructure. Additionally GPL intends to complete a Field Audit of all meter reading routes to improve customer account records and significantly reduce estimated bill computations for non-maximum demand customers.
At the beginning of the year the company committed to producing 97% of Maximum Demand Bills based on actual meter readings but managed to only produce 91%. They also committed to producing 90% of non-Maximum Demand Bills based on actual meter readings and were able to reach this benchmark.
The company reported that the reason for the failure lay in connectivity issues caused by construction and enclosure interference as the meters are remotely read.
The company has since engaged with its suppliers who highlighted some of the hindrances and provided recommendations for improvements. Addition-ally they have rolled out upgraded technology for retrievals and introduced Whatsapp Meter Reads which allows customer to submit meter readings monthly due to inaccessibility.
The one recorded area of success was in the issuance of bills with the company committing to issue bills to Maximum Demand Customers including domestic and small businesses within seven days of reading the meter. They were able to accomplish this goal within five days. For non-maximum demand customers a goal of 10 days was set but the company was able to deliver these bills on average within eight days.
In relation to the number of days it took to receive payments from customers the company aimed for 30 days but due to late payments from its largest customer Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) it required a whopping 54 days to achieve this. Adjusted data which excluded GWI showed the company was able to retrieve payments within 22 days. GWI accounts for approximately 8% of GPL’s earning according to comments made during the presentation.
GPL also missed by one day its goal in relation to paying its creditors. While the hope was that this would be achieved in 26 days it took on average 27 days.
Having promised to maintain, in stable conditions, voltages of ±5% of the nominal voltage and ± 10% following a system disturbance, the company according to its data was only able to maintain these levels 97% of the time within any 30-day period.
The company explained that since it is difficult to monitor the voltage delivered to each customer the Standard is based on the number of voltage complaints and the time taken to resolve them. GPL hopes that the installation of some 50,000 smart meters with supporting infrastructure under the Power Utility Upgrade Programme and GPL’s internal meter replacement programme will improve the monitoring of voltage delivery.
