The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) says that the severing of its marine cable across the Demerara River in November last year cost $201m and it has now introduced a virtual aid to protect its infrastructure.
In a notice on its website, GPL said that in addition to the cost the incident took five international and local contracting companies along with the utility’s staff four weeks to repair. As a result, the company decided to implement a new active warning system to vessels.
GPL said that on Friday July 9th, it activated a Virtual Aid-to-Navigation (AtoN) beacon that constantly transmits the location of two of the cables on radio frequencies used by ships’ Automatic Identification System (AIS).
The power company said that the concept was initiated and tested by its Information Technology (IT) Division with advice from the Maritime Administration Department and the Guyana Telecommuni-cations Agency. The beacon was installed by a combined team from GPL’s IT Division, the Communications and Electronics section and the Transmission & Distribution Area central section.
GPL said that this is the first Virtual AtoN in the country and the company’s infrastructure is now better protected. It added that the Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) numbers broadcast by the AIS Virtual AtoM were officially granted by the Guyana Telecommunications Agency. It further said that the data from this beacon will be made available as open data via internet aggregators including MarineTraffic.com thereby allowing the widest possible use by any Government of Guyana agency, the coast guard and private sector shipping companies.
A Netherlands-registered vessel, NLIST DLEP was said to be responsible for the damage to the submarine power cable last November. That cable links the Kingston and Vreed-en-Hoop substations.
