Wärtsilä and Guyana Power and Light (GPL) engineers are close to determining the root cause of the malfunctioning of the newly installed generator sets at the Garden of Eden plant, Minister in the Ministry of Public Works Deodat Indar said.
Indar yesterday told this newspaper that the engineers are still running diagnosis testing and should be able to determine the reason behind fuel flowing into the exhaust. He noted that they suspect it has to do with a part of the engine but they are running further tests to confirm that theory.
He said that if it is an issue of spare parts coming into the country the repairs will take some time.
Wärtsilä, a Finnish company is currently bound to an operate and maintenance agreement with GPL which was clinched in 2019. As such the agreement will cover fixing problems with the engines which are still under warranty with the support of GPL engineers.
Indar disclosed that GPL has reverted to its old generators to meet the electricity demand. He noted that if they had not activated the generators which had been on standby since the new equipment came into play, power outages would have been more widespread.
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 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, 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.
In November 2020, the power company had received five generators from Finland. The five Wärtsilä generators can each generate 9.3 MW of power. The total cost for the generators is just over US$50m.
