Electricity generation countrywide is still “tight” but should improve before Christmas, Chairman of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Board, Winston Brassington and Prime Minister Samuel Hinds have assured.
Speaking at a press conference at the NCN studios yesterday, Brassington said that October has been a difficult month for generation, particularly in Berbice, but the situation has improved in the last week and has stabilized. “However, the situation remains tight but is expected to improve before Christmas”, he asserted.
The GPL Chairman recalled that Berbice had suffered a series of breakdowns of generating sets all at the same time, which compounded the situation. He stated that the 5 Megawatts (MW) unit at Skeldon has been fixed as well as the two 2.2MW GM units at Onverwagt. The 5MW unit at Canefield will have the engine block changed by November 10, he stated. The GPL Chairman pointed out that as of now a total of 15.5MW of power is available in Berbice and this includes all three generation units at Skeldon. He emphasized that this has improved from 7MW available there earlier in October and noted that peak demand in that area is typically 14.5MW. He declared that the current capacity in the county is more than adequate for Christmas.
Meantime, in Demerara, the 5.5MW Wartsila unit overhaul has been completed while the 2.2MW Versailles unit is expected to be available by next week. Additionally, the 2.5MW unit at the Garden of Eden is expected to be available by November 10.
The power company will also be renting three 1.6MW Caterpillar units from MACORP at a cost of US$55,000 per unit per month. These units, which would contribute 4.8MW to the grid, are expected in the country by the end of November. Brassington said that total available capacity in the county is currently 67MW made up of 44MW of Wartsila with the rest being a mix of Caterpillar and other old generating sets.
He said that total peak demand varies but has been hovering between 65-70MW while GPL projects to have available, a generation capacity of 77MW by December.
Brassington cautioned that while, in the short term, the generation situation is improving, there are still risks. “However, based on the current improvement, GPL does not expect any planned outages for Christmas. Unplanned outages may occur, however, when units break down or when there are transmission trips”, he stated, reading from a prepared statement.
He further noted that a number of factors had contributed to the problems encountered including an increase in customer demand, the timeframe before capital projects came on stream, and in Berbice the Skeldon units had intermittent problems that were not anticipated.
Hinds, echoing that things were “tight” but expected to be improved by Christmas said that the setbacks largely came out of the struggle of meeting growing requirements for electricity. He said that government had not allowed electricity tariffs to be increased in the way it is required. He called for the conservation of electricity. It was stated that the bulk of fuel is currently being sourced from Suriname.
Brassington had also stated that until the three capital projects, costing over US$30M, announced earlier this year come on stream, reliable generation capacity will be tight. Additionally, he said, GPL expects to invest US$40M (via a Chinese loan) over the next three years in rebuilding its transmission system. He pointed out that between this year and 2011, over US$70M is being invested directly into the power company by the government to improve generation and transmission.
Meantime, in answering questions from reporters, Brassington said that the power company had only made slight progress in reducing technical and commercial losses this year. There was, he said, three major reasons for commercial losses and these include theft, defective meters and problems with the billing system but there are various strategies to reduce these.
With regards to the Lamaha embankment over which the high-power electricity link between Kingston and Sophia is to pass, it was stated that the squatters have been given up to February to move. Regarding construction of the link, which was scheduled to commence in September, the Prime Minister said that there was a problem with the availability of poles but construction is expected to start even with the people there.
