A Guyana Power and Light (GPL) pole near Blankenburg, West Coast Demerara broke yesterday morning at 5.19, knocking 53 megawatts (MW) of power out of the system and triggering widespread blackouts.
A release yesterday from GPL said that the top end of the primary pole on the Edinburgh Feeder corridor broke off in the vicinity of Blankenburg.
The GPL release said that the magnitude of fault current (conductors/phases coming into contact) from the broken pole resulted in the generators at the Vreed-en-Hoop facility going offline and triggered a cascading effect on generators at the company’s Kingston Power Plants.
The sudden loss of around 53 Megawatts of generation disrupted service to customers in Central Georgetown, East Bank Demerara, West Coast Demerara, West Bank Demerara and East Bank Essequibo, GPL said.
Gradual restoration commenced immediately and at approximately 5.57 am the first area was repowered. Most areas were repowered at approximately 9:20 am. However, customers of Blankenburg, La Jalousie, Den Amstel and Hague, West Coast Demerara remained without power due to remedial work on the broken structure. Power was restored to those areas at approximately 1 pm, GPL said.
This is the latest of disruptions which have underlined the fragility of GPL’s transmission and distribution system and deepened concerns about the efficient transfer of energy.
