The Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) says it managed for the second consecutive year to successfully maintain a stable supply of electricity during the Christmas season.
According to a GPL release, only five shutdowns were experienced in the year 2019, as against a total of 12 shutdowns in 2018, and 25 in 2017. Customers in Demerara, Berbice, Anna Regina, Bartica, Leguan and Wakenaam experienced minimal service interruptions, which were largely attributed to localised faults.
The company assured that it aims “to completely eliminate these events,” even though this will be a challenge until existing generation and transmission & distribution (T&D) systems are upgraded. Despite being plagued with an aged Transmission and Distribution (T&D) network, the utility company says it is diligently conducting planned maintenance activities on the network, while having an increased number of emergency response crews on standby to address localised faults.
The Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) between December 18 to 31, 2019, had a total of 144.7 megawatts (MW) of available generation capacity, while the power plants at Anna Regina, Bartica, Leguan, and Wakenaam, together had a total of 17.18 MW. These megawatts were available due to GPL’s efforts to efficiently service aged generation plants, some of which have been semi-retired.
Unfortunately however, there were some accidents during the holiday season which resulted in damage to some of the company’s poles. Those accidents coupled with a few transformers failures resulted in minor service disruptions in some communities which were quickly dealt with by GPL field staff.
Looking toward the future, the power company says it intends to continue to ensure there is sufficient and available capacity to meet its demand, while at the same time improving the quality of its supply to all customers. Chief Executive Officer,
Albert Gordon, explained that planned maintenance for the upkeep of units as well as other operational works will continue for the new year as the company is also pursuing a number of developmental and expansion plans, which once implemented, will see the systems operating throughout the year with little chance of service interruptions.
