Wärtsilä engineers arrived here on Saturday and have begun diagnostic testing on malfunctioning generator sets at GPL’s Garden of Eden plant and load shedding will continue until the problem is resolved, Prime Minister Mark Phillips yesterday said.
“The engineers are in country and inspections and diagnostics have started,” Phillips who holds responsibility for the energy sector yesterday told Stabroek News when asked for an update.
“ Wärtsilä is looking at the gen-sets. They are responsible for all the maintenance etcetera…,” he added.
Minister in the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar told this newspaper that the Finnish company sent down four engineers who arrived in Guyana on Saturday night.
He explained that an operate and maintenance agreement in 2019 with the Finnish company covers fixing problems with the engines which are still under warranty, although GPL engineers will give support.
And as the team works overtime to resolve a problem that has seen parts of Region 4 on scheduled load shedding, the Prime Minister and Indar said that as at yesterday afternoon there had been no preliminary diagnostic and thus the load shedding will continue.
On Friday, fearing a massive explosion after the detection of fuel in the exhaust of a generator, GPL shut down its Garden of Eden power plant, resulting in the loss of 46.5 MWs. As a consequence, load shedding started on Friday night with disruption in the power supplied to residents on the East Bank of Demerara, the West Coast of Demerara and the East Bank of Essequibo.
GPL Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bharat Dindyal had stressed that the decision was made “out of an abundance of caution.”
The CEO explained that about a month ago the company’s technicians and engineers at the facility noticed the elevated temperatures on all of the generators, causing them to suspect something was amiss. He stated that the temperatures were about 2°C above normal.
Having consulted with engineers of the Finnish manufacturer, Wärtsilä, Dindyal said GPL made a decision to send samples of the lube oil for analysis in Houston, Texas. He stated that the results of the analysis, which returned on Thursday, showed that viscosity more than doubled and additives to neutralize acid in the lube oil were depleted by 50 to 60%.
The detection, he emphasized, led to the complete shutdown of the facility, thereby removing its power from the national grid.
Guyana’s Prime Minister had assured the public that while the load shedding was a humbug, safety precautions were necessary.
“I want the people of Guyana to understand that this is from a safety precaution and is necessary that we shut down these plants to do some further checks,” Phillips said.
He noted that there will be load shedding in different parts of the country as a result of the situation but stressed the need for safety and to protect the brand new plant, which was set up at a cost of over US$50M.
“We will go through and once satisfied [and given clearance] we will bring back [this generation] on stream [in a] couple days or weeks,” he said.
The nature of the issue will determine how soon the plant can go back into power generation.
In November 2020, the power company had received five generators from Finland. The five Wärtsilä generators can each generate 9.3 MW of power.
Phillips yesterday explained that the over-US$50M plants were bought under an agreement between the then APNU+AFC government and Wärtsilä and is a separate agreement from the other generator sets being manned across the country.
This was echoed by Indar who said the agreement should not be confused with that of one with local company, Power Producers and Distributors Inc (PPDI). “These five gen- sets and new plant have nothing to do with PPDI. Wärtsilä deals directly with this and they have the operate and maintenance agreement, he said.
For now, customers receiving electricity from the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System will have to actively monitor GPL’s social media and website for updates on the situation.
Yesterday, the company informed customers residing from Good Hope to Enmore on the East Coast of Demerara that they would have been without power from 6 pm to 10 pm as they continue to work on fixing the problem.
