Rat caused power outages – GPL

The Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) today said that a rat coming into contact with live parts in the power equipment at the Kingston Power Plant was partly responsible for early morning power disruptions in parts of Georgetown.

Power was restored to the affected areas, except Lacytown, within a few hours using alternative circuits. GPL officials are working around the clock to ensure that the situation is rectified by 17:00hrs, the company said.

In a press release, GPL said that at approximately 00:15hrs (12.15am) today protective equipment at the 20.7MW plant in Kingston activated, causing a major disruption to supply in Demerara. “An inspection revealed that a rat had entered the switchgear and come into contact with live parts and a power cable had also failed,” it explained.

According to GPL, the plant is designed to prevent the ingress of rodents but an unused cable gland was found to be open. Wartsila has been mandated to inspect the entire plant and to improve its rodent eradication measures.

On identifying the problem, GPL said all the switchgear was inspected before the plant was returned to service after 02:15 hrs. The power cable that failed was serving consumers in Kingston, Cummingsburg, Lacytown, Thomas Lands and Kitty. GPL was able to successfully serve most of the consumers from alternative circuits but in attempting to restore service to consumers in Lacytown, a switch at the corner of New Market and Main Streets failed, causing another system disruption. GPL said that before 06:00hrs, all consumers were repowered except those in Lacytown. “With CXC exams being written today, GPL has decided to delay the replacement of the damaged switch until 15:00hrs,” it added.

Repairs to the damaged cable at the 20.7MW plant are completed, GPL said, while adding that it expected that by 1700hrs all the circuits serving Kingston, Cummingsburg, Lacytown and Kitty would be normalised.

According to the company, another outage occurred in the Kingston/Main Street area at about 12:45hrs, as a result of a damaged connection on a feeder. GPL was quickly able to restore the system before the scheduled shutdown at 15:00hrs.

GPL apologised for the inconvenience caused and is assuring the public that the repowering of the entire Demerara system will be completed as scheduled.