The Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) is seeking to source an additional 25MW in order to meet increased demand while working to address continuing power outages.
A meeting was held at the company’s Duke Street office, where Prime Minister Mark Phillips and Junior Minister of Public Works Deodat Indar met with GPL’s Chief Executive Officer Albert Gordon and other company officials in light of a recent spate of outages.
Indar told reporters that problems continue with the old grid system and there is also need for additional power in the interim, as GPL awaits generator sets that it has bought.
It is why this week tenders for the supply of the additional 25MW will be advertised and he said persons with excess from renewable sources are free to apply.
“Immediately, GPL has been asked to put out an Expression of Interest for persons who are willing to provide power to the grid. That will add capacity and output to what GPL has, of about 120MW. If any generator within that entire substation set that is on the DBIS (Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System) goes out, that falls below 120MW [and] you will have blackouts…,” he explained.
“There is no backup capacity and that is why we need to add to the grid, to see what is there in the private sector so we can have whatever backup power,” he added, while noting that purchased generator sets would not be available until after April next year.
With respect to the frequent blackouts, Indar said that the team heard from GPL of short, medium and long term plans. He added that while GPL has “very solid” plans, the implementation, including the timing and the funding of the initiatives, needs to be addressed and managed.
Indar said that in the short-term, a 7MW engine will be added by today and there is a 16MW one that will come on stream within 15 to 20 days.
Gordon explained that the utility company was working with very old generator sets and has had to take parts from different decommissioned sets to make others work. He is hoping that by next May, there would be some solution to the power issue with the purchased sets available.
“The system is old…the team had brought back plants that were retired, some from 1974… to make capacity. So we have from those baseload we are trying to get available but they can’t support and run to meet the demand,” he said.
He added that a countrywide shutdown last week and a number of power outages since then were due to a problem with a submarine cable, weather impact on the old grid and generators that are working overtime. He ruled out suggestions that there is any sabotage of the utility company’s system.
Last Sunday, according to GPL, the submarine cable which links the Vreed-en-Hoop and Kingston Power plants tripped on a fault, causing a total shutdown of the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System.
Blackouts continued during the week and up to yesterday morning, residents of some areas in the capital complained that they were without power again.
Many persons on Facebook vented their dissatisfaction at the power outages, which they noted have become frequent in the past week.
Gordon emphasised that there was no evidence of sabotage, although some persons may posit that the frequent blackouts came shortly after the new PPP/C government took office.
“We have no evidence of sabotage and we are always vigilant… the demand is now creeping up on us as the economy opens and the old units are beginning to fail because we had been pushing them,” he said.
Gordon said that by the end of this week it is hoped that the expressions of interest will be submitted and GPL can begin swiftly putting plans in place for the increased demand.
“We want whoever has capacity to [apply]. We have done some surveys and we know some persons have capacity but we are putting this out because some people may be able to do some things quickly. And if they can do that, then that may be able to take us up to when the new plant comes in,” he said.
The current peak demand on the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System is between 120MW and 226MW. But GPL forecasts that an additional 25MW will be needed to address current demands and to prepare for the Christmas season, when that demand is expected to rise to around an average of 150MW.
Operations Director Bharat Harjohn explained that being able to meet a demand of 150MW is crucial. “These are all small units that make up the 150 and during the course that they are run, some might have to be off for maintenance. As of now… we have about 120MW and we have to meet current demand of 120MW to 122MW. We barely have enough to meet that. We need that additional because the country demand would have increased, we are out of a rainy season, a lot of people using air conditioning units, [the] economy is opening back, [and] more and more people are coming on the grid…,” he said.
“We are also approaching the Christmas holidays and we are expecting an increased demand. So for us to meet those expectations, we need to have to get at least 20MW to 25MW until that new plants are here,” he added.
