-hoping to be at 265 MW by end of year
The Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) is now generating enough to meet peak demand and is aiming to produce at least 265 megawatts of electricity by the end of 2024.
The company’s Execu-tive Management Commit-tee Head, Kesh Nandlall in making his presentation to the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services on Wednesday explained that in 2021 a 46.5-megawatt plant was commissioned, and in 2023 four new caterpillar sets at a total of 5 megawatts were brought on stream and this year generators were installed at Columbia, Mahaicony to supply 28.5 megawatts along with the Turkish power ship which he said is now operating at full capacity of 36 mega-watts.
According to Nandlall the gross generation for GPL is expected to grow by 20% per annum between 2024 – 2028 and the peak demand by 18% per annum.
Nandlall said that the Demerara-Berbice Inter-connected System currently has an available capacity of 209.4 megawatts which includes the Turkish power ship and the Columbia plant. However, he said, it excludes a total capacity of 12.4 megawatts from two engines that are down at Kingston due to several issues and certain engines that are out of operation for maintenance.
As of May, the peak demand has been recorded at 183 megawatts – the highest for the year, “We require a spinning reserve of 27.71 megawatts which is one and a half times the largest operating set we have, currently, that is 18 megawatts, one of the engines on the power ship… To meet that current peak demand, 183 plus the 27 spinning reserve comfortably, we need 210, which we are comfortable with at the current time.”
He added, “By the end of May the Columbia Power Plant will be commissioned which will add an additional 8.1 mega-watts available generation. By the end of May also we would have completed one of the units at Kingston and that will be 6.9 megawatts which will take us 224.4 megawatts available, generation, by the end of July 2024 another engine will be available of 5.5 megawatts at Kingston which will take us to 229.9 or 230, by the end of December 2024, all of our maintenance issues should be caught up with as we have to incrementally bring down these sets to maintain them and we should (have) available 245 megawatts.”
He then stated that at the end of 2024, “we will have a peak demand, towards the ending, of 232 megawatts and we will also continue to increase our generation (which) should be 265. We are going to add another 30 megawatts to the grid and we are working to source that at this point.”
“Taking that into consideration and the spinning reserve which continues to be around 27.71 we shall have an excess capacity with that increase in demand …so our plans for the rest of the year are in place to ensure that we meet the capacity demand of our customer base”, he stressed.
Nandlall on Wednesday pointed to the growth of customers, as according to him from 2008 the company grew from 150,000 customers to almost 227,000 currently.
Turning to the company’s peak demand, Nandlall said that in 2022 the peak demand was 153 megawatts, while in September 2023 it moved to 186 megawatts and in 2024 it is expected to go to 232 megawatts.
“We are going through this so that you can understand the challenges and the rapid growth in the customer demand due to more housing schemes, due to the economic growth in the country due to the wealth of customers increasing, more appliances are being bought and that should be understood in the context of infrastructure development and the time it takes and the prolonged dry weather with increasing temperatures, all that coupled together creates the need for consumers to acquire more appliances like air conditions, fan, and that’s all combined together driving the increase in peak demand and gross generation requirement”, he said.
Meanwhile, zeroing in on the country’s gas-to-energy project which after coming on stream is expected to add 300 megawatts to the grid by the end of 2025, Nandlall said, “It’s in two phases, phase one will deal with the gas turbine which will add 209.3 megawatts in addition to that we’ll have the construction of the necessary transmission lines to dispatch this power…And also the construction of (a) new substation so that we can also dispatch the power effectively.”
Phase Two of the project will deal with bringing the additional steam turbines online to increase the generation by 88.42 megawatts.
Installed capacity
Meanwhile, APNU+AFC Member of Parliament Juretha Fernandes questioned “What was the installed capacity in 2020?” In response, Nandlall said he did not have the number with him but had “the accumulative amount installed from 2008 to 2023.”
She then questioned extensively which specific areas in the country require more power. She noted that Nandlall in his presentation referenced the development of housing schemes, etc and that the required capacity has increased and as such “it would be interesting to see what locations are actually pushing this higher demand because it doesn’t say anything to that by the graph we are looking right now.”
Prime Minister Mark Phillips said that that information would have to be submitted after the meeting since they did not have the information at hand.
Meanwhile, Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill then questioned whether given the expected increase in generation capacity and the new plants on stream whether GPL was in a “comfortable” position to meet those demands now.
Nandlall in response said, “The answer to that question is yes, we are comfortable right now to meet that demand.”
Edghill said that he noticed that technical and commercial losses were not discussed in the presentation and asked that Nandlall advise the Committee on this.
In response, Nandlall said “If I look at technical and commercial losses from 2008, they were somewhere around 40% and currently the losses, we have brought that down from there to 25% currently.”
Further, Edghill asked whether he could indicate what percentage of the overall 25% would be as a result of electricity theft. “Based on our analysis in the past we determined that electricity theft is approximately 13% of that 25%”, Nandlall noted.
Edghill then questioned whether the company with its expertise has been able to isolate the areas where there has been significant electricity theft. Nandlall said that “We have not. We have not isolated all the areas. This would require some amount of investment in terms of metering, the feeders, and all the feeders to know exactly, precisely where the bulk of the theft, the losses resides”, he said.
He added, “We have several programmes we are working on which include going out there looking at consumption patterns, going out changing out defective meters and removing blatant illegal connections on …the network from different areas some of it can be challenging and very risky to our employees but there are several programmes that we have been continuously working on to reduce electricity theft.”
The parliamentary Economic Services Committee had invited the PM and GPL to appear before it to explain the power situation amid a shortfall which led to blackouts and hurried purchases of generators.
