The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) is advertising for the construction of a 25- megawatt heavy fuel oil power plant together with 69kV interconnection facilities as the company seeks to up its generation capacity for the end-of-year peak period.
In an advertisement yesterday in the Kaieteur News and the Guyana Chronicle but not the Stabroek News, the company said that all bids for the new generation must be submitted by 9 am on November 27 to the Chairman of the National Board of Procurement and Tender Administration, Ministry of Finance.
Interested applicants may purchase a complete set of the bid documents for a non-refundable fee of $25,000 on submission of a written application to GPL’s Procurement and Inventory Accounting Officer, located at 40 Main Street, Georgetown.
The notice said that all tenders must be accompanied by National Insurance Scheme (NIS), Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Value-Added Tax (VAT) compliance certificates.
At a recent press conference, the company said that it was upbeat about its capacity for generation and that the 10-megawatt diesel generators will be available for commercial operations on November 19, well before the start of the Christmas peak period. The company had said then that it has arrangements in place for the provision of an additional 25 to 30 megawatts of power in the short term.
The company said that once successfully implemented the 10 megawatts of power that Skeldon will provide the Berbice grid will significantly improve the lives and livelihood of Berbicians and will have an impact on Demerara as well. It is planned that some of the mobile Caterpillar generating sets that are stationed in Berbice will be relocated to the city to add to generation capacity.
GPL’s Board and management will continue to work towards finding more stable interim solutions to power, until hydropower is introduced in the year 2011. According to GPL CEO Bharat Dindyal, there will be improvements in transmission and distribution.
This will also prepare the system for the increased generation from fossil fuel generating sets and from eventual hydropower to come on stream in 2011. Dindyal also explained to reporters how hard it was to procure new generating sets since there was a problem in sourcing crankshafts for them.
