The Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) is still awaiting a repair kit from a manufacturer to fix its damaged 69kV submarine cable, according to Public Relations Officer Shevion Sears.
Early in July, GPL’s Divisional Director of Projects Ryan Ross had told Stabroek News that the company was waiting on the manufacturer to build and send the repair kit.
However, Sears noted on Friday that the company had not yet received the kit and there was no precise date for its arrival. She, however, added that once it arrives, work will start on repairing the cable.
Divisional Director of Operations Bharat Harjohn had said that the cable developed a fault on June 2nd, around 7.21 pm, which they suspect to have been caused by the anchor of a vessel. He said the fault was around 714 metres from the Kingston substation.
An examination of the cable by the power company found that the armour and insulation protection of the cable bore damage which extended to the conductors within.
As a result of the damage, the power company had lost a total of 14MW of power fed from the Vreed-en-Hoop power station, which had resulted in the eastern side of the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) having a capacity of approximately 90MW of power available to satisfy a demand of 100MW across the grid.
As part of its emergency response to the damage to the cable, the company decided to run a smaller 13.8 kV submarine cable from Vreed-en-Hoop to Kingston to supply additional power and carried out maintenance on Kingston generating units.
Sears said the company currently has adequate generation capacity. Given that there have been frequent blackouts in recent weeks, she explained that these have been caused by localised faults as a result of heavy rains and winds over the rain season.
“We are urging our customers to call our centres in cases like these and to report to us so that we can have our emergency teams quickly effect the necessary works in those localised areas,” she said.
She also added that the company is currently installing an express feeder at the Vreed-en-Hoop power station that might be contributing to the blackouts. However, when finished, a more stable supply of electricity will be provided.
GPL is also undertaking scheduled maintenance of transmission lines, and as a result, large sections of the country will have to endure scheduled blackouts for hours.
