Amid weeks of intermittent blackouts that have angered citizens, Public Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson today acknowledged that transmission and distribution problems persist at the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) and he promised a solution by the end of the year.
Successive governments have failed to bring a lasting end to blackouts and promises by GPL last year that extensive maintenance work would ease outages in the city have proven to be false.
Almost on a daily basis city residents have complained about daily blackouts. In a GINA report today, Patterson said GPL “has difficulty with protecting its distribution system, and this is responsible for the poor delivery of electricity”.
He stated, “we have enough generators working and power provided, but what happened is that we have a problem with the distribution of that power, and that is one of the issues we have to address with Lot A of the Power Utility Upgrade Programme.”
The Minister said that there are many hurdles with the distribution of electricity especially on the coast, but efforts are in place to ensure that the system is improved.
Patterson acknowledged that the power company has a lot more work to do towards achieving this goal and said that efforts will be intensified to ensure that this is feasible by the end of 2017.
He said that by the end of the year, the distribution system will be fully protected so in the event of emergencies such as a collision from an accident or a fallen tree, the disruption will be isolated to that particular area and not affect the entire coast.
“When there is an accident, the whole feedback is damaged, and every time this happens we give citizens the same excuse; we don’t want this anymore so we’re moving ahead to have this improved for the future,” the Minister told GINA.
The protection of the distribution system will be complemented with the installation of the ‘redundant’ lines and the upgrading of sub-stations, Patterson added.
GINA said that the Ministry of Public Infrastructure will begin pursuing alternative power lines at crucial locations across the country, so as to obviate major power failures and upgrade the six existing sub-stations within the system to enable better voltage stability and reduce technical losses.
He noted that, currently GPL has a contract out and received responses from three reputable international firms whose representatives will be coming shortly to look at the entire system, “and to upgrade our protection; so if there is a problem that particular section will only be affected.”
A feasibility study will also be carried out to assess where protection is needed. “I am positive that by the end of 2017 we can have this problem fixed,” Minister Patterson said.
The government and GPL had been criticized for not levelling with the public on the reasons for the ongoing blackouts.
