The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) has attributed yesterday’s shutdown of the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) to a 16.5 megawatt loss of generation capacity at its Kingston and Vreed-en-Hoop power plants due to a drop in frequency and a defective speed sensor.
The blackout, which affected the counties of Demerara and Berbice, occurred around 8:35 am.
“At Vreed-en-Hoop, the engine safety module (ESM), which provides monitoring protection for the engines was activated and shut down the No. 2 engine due to a defective speed sensor, which resulted in a loss of 8.7MWs. While at Kingston, a drop in frequency resulted in the loss of 7.8MWs,” a GPL release explained.
The release stated that remedial work to restore the system commenced within minutes of the shutdown, resulting in power restoration.
In Demerara, power was restored by 11:16 am, while in Berbice, most areas were repowered by 8:38 am. Communities from Cumberland to Auchlyne were restored at 11:19 am.
“Our Company remains fully cognizant of the inconvenience caused by these outages and offers sincerest apologies,” GPL stated.
There have been regular instances of unscheduled power outages recently, due to technical issues experienced by the entity.
Last Tuesday, May 21, the DBIS experienced a shutdown due to loss of generation capacity, which GPL said may have originated at the Kingston 1 Plant, which was at the time supplying in excess of 11 MW.
Incremental power restoration began around 08:15 hrs along sections of the East Bank Demerara and central Georgetown, and continued into all remaining areas in both counties. The last area was repowered at 09:38hrs.
Meanwhile, last Monday, May 20, following scheduled maintenance just the day before, broken secondary poles and downed 13.8 kV distribution lines along the Sophia Backlands resulted in a feeder trip, causing an interruption in the supply of electricity for customers from ‘A’ to ‘E’ Fields Sophia and North Sophia to Success, ECD.
The unfavourable ground conditions, coupled with the inclement weather experienced along the coast on Monday, hindered efforts to accelerate remedial work. As a result, while customers from ‘A’ to ‘E’ Fields, Sophia, were repowered within 90 minutes of the outage, customers from North Sophia to Success remained without electricity until 18:30hrs.
The section of the distribution network aback of Sophia that was affected on May 20, did not benefit from maintenance activities performed on transmission lines on May 19, as this fault occurred on the secondary 13.8 kV distribution network.
