Accident responsible for May Day blackouts

Three power outages experienced in the Demerara county on Wednesday were as a result of several complications after a vehicle crashed into a utility pole in Kingston, Georgetown, the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) said yesterday.

In a release, GPL said that the initial outage, which occurred at 05:15 hrs on Labour Day, was the result of a vehicle crashing into a pole at Barrack and Water streets. The company explained that since the accident was not reported, power was restored to the network at 05:25 hrs, as is the standard procedure.

A second outage, however, occurred during the re-powering phase, which revealed that system’s line hardware had been damaged in the accident. This problem occurred at around 05:58 hrs.

The company said that its technicians worked to repair/replace the damaged line hardware and were in the process of re-energising the network when they realised that components within the switchgear at the number one Kingston Wartsila Plant had also been damaged as a result of the accident. Th

is problem, according to the company, was not discovered until the last outage occurred at around 09:22 hrs.

“The Plant was then isolated to allow the completion of repairs to the switchgear, whilst the network was repowered from other generating plants. Power was fully restored at 10:05hrs,” the company said.

Considering the fact that there was no report of the accident, and the difficulties that followed, the company is encouraging the public to contact its emergency centre on 226-4015/6 on a 24-hour basis to report such incidents.