Now scheduled for an August commissioning, the Guyana Power and Light’s (GPL) new US$52 million, 46.5 MW generating facility at Garden of Eden (GoE), East Bank of Demerara is currently in its testing phase.
“It is on track…it has some technical stuff we have to sort out but the main superstructures are completed and everything is in place. They are actually doing testing now. This will lead into commissioning,” Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar told Stabroek News.
He stated that the project is scheduled to be completed by mid-August with a commissioning before the end of the month.
Inclement weather conditions and the COVID-19 pandemic have been identified as the factors behind the further delay in completion. The project which was started last year was due for completion in April but this was pushed back to June this year. With that deadline no longer feasible the project has now been delayed for an additional two months.
Indar had said that the new power generation facility is the biggest generating project in terms of a single location.
Two aspects of the project which caused an additional delay were the arrival and installation of the transformers and the fuel tank.
“We have an alternative arrangement for fuel, because we have an existing facility here, but the plant itself will be testing during June and July… we want to make sure that when the project comes fully on stream there will be no issues, because it’s the biggest project in terms of single location generating capacity”, he said.
In November last year, the power company had received five generators from Finland. The five Wärtsilä generators can each generate 9.3 MW of power.
In October last year, Prime Minister Mark Phillips was given a tour of the GoE facility. During the tour Ryon Ross, Divisional Director of Engineering Services had explained that the power plant will be a dual-fuel power generator. He stated that with the expectation of Guyana tapping into natural gas from offshore petroleum operations, the power plant is built to work with both heavy fuel oil and natural gas.
The old power generating plant had been costing GPL a large sum of money to maintain and Ross noted that with the generators being old, they are no longer efficient and finding spare parts can be difficult at times. The power plant was constructed in the 1970s and is equipped with engines that are over 26 years old.
Ross had said that GPL does not plan on abandoning the old power plant when the new one comes on stream as they will need all the electricity generated for the national grid.
