The country’s power supply was disrupted on Wednesday January 7, due to tripped transmission lines which connect the Garden of Eden and Golden Grove substations, according to Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) Bharat Harjohn.
He told this newspaper on Saturday that the tripped transmission lines, which were subsequently rectified by the utility company’s emergency team, had significantly affected the power generation capacity.
“This sudden loss of power caused a cascading effect on the grid resulting in a shutdown of the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS),” Harjohn said.
It was reported that a few communities in Berbice had experienced power outage, he said.
“It is important to note that a lot of our power comes from Garden of Eden, so when you have these lines tripped it prevents the power from going down to rest of the system in central areas in Georgetown like Sophia and so forth, and with that large power deficit the system will cascade, and affect the other power generating plants, because these plants will not have that kind of reserve to take up that loss of power generation,” he explained.
As a preventative mechanism to the exhaustion or overload of the power plants, a power shutdown was warranted, he added.
As it relates to the installation of the generators, Harjohn said seven have been installed and the team was working to get the remaining 10 connected to the grid; 17 were procured from Honduras. He informed that by next week an additional three will be connected.
The heavy fuel oil generators had experienced several shipping delays. They were first expected here on November 22nd and then December 5th before finally arriving on December 13th.
Consequently, the installation schedules were pushed back, but Harjohn who is also in charge of Strategic Operations assured that all 17 generations will be installed by March0.
Once all the US$27 million worth generators are connected to the power grid at GPL’s substation at Columbia, East Coast Demerara, the country’s power generation should increase, according to Harjohn. The Columbia station is in the Mahaica/Mahaicony area and the generators will feed into the Demerara/Berbice Inter-connected System (DBIS).
Meanwhile, citizens continue to deplore the frequent power outages. Last week several university students were unable to facilitate online classes owing to the abrupt and protracted power outages.
While GPL is anticipating an average peak usage of around 236 megawatts this year, Minister in the Ministry of Public Works Deodat Indar last year November informed that the power company has already received unsolicited offers from individuals with capacity and proposals.
According to the subject minister, those offers will be carefully evaluated to meet the growing demand this year.
