Head of the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) Albert Gordon says that the company has a plan to end blackouts and is already moving to secure funding to address its mechanical issues.
Over the last few weeks, large sections of the country have endured long hours of blackout due to technical issues with the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS).
Gordon, while attending the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen and Tain Talks 18, on Thursday at the Pegasus Hotel, responded to a question by social activist Nicole Cole on whether there is a plan to end blackouts in the country.
“Yes, there is a plan to end blackouts,” Gordon stated.
Gordon pointed out that in 2017, there were a total of 25 system-wide shutdowns, as compared to 12 in 2018, and emphasised that GPL workers have been working on the same inadequate system but managed to reduce total shutdowns by more than 50%.
He further noted that between September last year and now, there have been a total of six shutdowns, with one occurring in December last year and five within the last few weeks. The recent ones, he said, were the result of the inadequate generator capacity of the system, as well as the poor transmission and distribution system, which is poorly configured. He noted that while it has evolved over the years, there are still inherent weaknesses.
As a result, he said the company is targeting the heart of the problem – the transmission line that links the Kingston Substation to the Sophia Substation- after it was found that the last five blackouts mainly came from those two areas, as well as the Vreed-en-Hoop Substation.
The company has since secured funding to fix the line between the Kingston and Sophia substations, given that there is one line that connects the system to the rest of the DBIS.
Gordon pointed out that whenever the line needs to be maintained, the company has no choice but to give scheduled power outages because of the archaic set up of the system, and on the other hand, if it does not regularly maintain the line, there is a large possibility the country can be plunged into longer power outages.
Gordon also noted that GPL has also secured US$20 million from the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) to reconfigure some of its substations and emphasised that it is a process that takes time.
“We have to go through a procurement process to select the contractors to do the work. We are on schedule for those projects but it takes time. For this year, we’ve had blackouts but they have been in the last five weeks. I said when I came here that having one shutdown in 25 years is not acceptable,” Gordon said.
He added that going forward they are going to need to generate more power and they have since identified financing from some sources that they are pursuing.
He also said that it is unfair that he has to see the power company’s staff working on Christmas or before Christmas, as when they are due to go on vacation with their families, they are working in the rain to keep the lights on.
