The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) suffered a shutdown last night after one of its units was taken out of service because of an oil leak which was deemed as high risk for a fire starting.
In a press release today, GPL said that at approximately 10.45 pm, one of its larger generating units (8.7 megawatts) at the Vreed-en-Hoop power plant, West Demerara developed a lube leak on a turbocharger and had to be taken out of service on an “emergency basis as there was a high risk of a fire starting”.
GPL said that an initial analysis suggests that the rapid offloading of the 8.7-megawatt unit led to a “significant frequency decline” and despite the intervention of other generators and the under-frequency load-shedding scheme, the system collapsed. Data gathering and analysis will continue today, GPL said, as captured by its Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system.
Efforts to restore power began immediately after the event and at approximately 10.57 pm the first circuit in Georgetown was repowered. Incremental restoration continued in the city and on the lower East Coast and all areas were repowered at around 12.33 am, GPL added.
