The Lethem Power Com-pany (LPC) has come under fire for its silence after residents in the Region Nine Township were forced to endure one week of power outages without any official word.
The issue is said to have been rectified as of yesterday but residents are still unclear as to what exactly transpired since the LPC did not release any information.
Stabroek News understands that just over a week ago the residents started experiencing unscheduled power outages for long periods. They say that the Lethem Power Company, despite requests, did not release any information as to the reason behind the interruptions in the power supply.
“The situation started over a week ago with unscheduled blackouts. So it was going and coming and we spent almost one day without power…we heard that the solar farm isn’t generating as much current as it should to be able to supply the community. So at any given time we can have a blackout and it can only supply half of the grid with current and that is the information they would have given. They haven’t been communicating directly with the public,” a resident told Stabroek News.
The government, in August, commissioned a $472 million one-mega-watt solar farm in the Lethem Township. The solar farm is expected to save approximately $136 million in fuel costs, annually.
The project was financ-ed under a loan from the Inter-American Develop-ment Bank (IDB) and IDB country representative (ag) Lorena Solorzano Salazar said the sum injected will not only support projects in Lethem but other communities with approximately 3.5 megawatts of energy in total.
Residents in Lethem normally pay $80 per kilowatt, which is a higher rate than Georgetown and according to the Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar, who commissioned the plant, with the farm now in place, no fuel will have to be utilised for at least five hours daily.
Yesterday, Chair of the LPC Board, Roger King told Stabroek News that the issues have been rectified but could not say why the company did not communicate with its customers. He was also hesitant to provide information about the problem.
“The situation is that we have all our sets running with the solar farm also up and running presently. We had some issues for the past week but everything is up and running as we speak. Presently the issues are behind us and we have the sets up and running presently,” he repeatedly said during the telephone interview.
After much prompting and back and forth between this newspaper and King, he said that two of the LPC’s generating sets went down. He explained that one went down with mechanical issues and another followed with electrical issues.
King maintained that the solar farm was not the reason behind the interruption of power and noted that the farm is still in its “feeling out” stage so it is not being relied on heavily. When asked whether the LPC has trained personnel on staff to address both issues with the generating sets and solar farm, the Board Chair declined to provide the information.
However, he said that “we have people at our disposal that are capable of handling those issues and we had them all the time.”
Stabroek News understands that a team of technical personnel had to travel from Georgetown to Lethem to rectify the problem.
Assurances
Lethem’s Mayor John Macedo yesterday said that he met with the Chief Executive Officer of the power company and was given assurances that they are working to rectify the problems.
“I did meet with them and they had highlighted to me that they were experiencing some difficulties and they were trying to find the fault. They said that it had nothing to do with the solar farm. One of the engines had some mechanical difficulties.
“What happened was one of the [generating] set had failed, the mechanic came to fix that one and at that time everything was okay. So while they were fixing that set that was out another set started to develop some problems and that was what caused some difficulties because one was already out of the system and then a second one give them some problems. They had some difficulties identifying what was the problem because the engine was working and then all of a sudden it dropped its load,” Macedo said.
Macedo, who headed the power company several years ago, said that Lethem is at a crucial point in power generation. He noted that this is the second time that the township has had an issue like this and it is also the biggest.
“I can tell you that between 2013 to 2021 we weren’t experiencing any problems and there was no issue. However, there was a period of poor maintenance and that may be catching up now. I am aware that new generating sets were purchased and should arrive next month so that is expected to better improve the service here.
“We are at a crucial stage now because the sets that we have are standby sets and we can only hope that going forward Lethem can cross over to where we can get bigger sets capable of continuous power generation so that we can get reliable electricity,” he said.
He added that they are monitoring the situation but as of now power supply remains stable.
According to the government, another 2.2 megawatts of hydropower are also in the pipeline for Region Nine (1.5 megawatts at Kumu, and 0.7 megawatts in the Moco Moco Village).
