As the country continues to be faced with daily and intermittent power outages, all of the 17 heavy fuel oil generators which were procured from Honduras last year are still to be installed.
Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Deputy Chief Executive Officer Bharrat Harjohn told Stabroek News on Wednesday last that nine were installed and the team was working assiduously to connect the remaining eight to the power grid.
He said that all generators will be connected by March month end which is a deadline that the company will be sticking with.
The arrival of the generators had experienced several shipping delays. They were first expected here on November 22nd and then December 5th before finally arriving on December 13th last year. Consequently, the installation schedules were pushed back. But Harjohn, who is also in charge of Strategic Operations, assured this newspaper that the deadline would be achieved.
Critics have said that the generators are secondhand and are causing the frequent power outages. Harjohn told this newspaper that once all the US$27 million worth of generators are connected to the power grid at GPL’s substation at Columbia, East Coast Demerara, the country’s power generation should increase. The Columbia station is in the Mahaica/Mahaicony area and the generators will feed into the Demerara/Berbice Inter-connected System.
Meanwhile, last Tuesday’s power disruption, which was due to a fault on the L4 transmission line, has been rectified, according to Harjohn. He said that the situation was quite unfortunate, but was eventually resolved.
The GPL in a statement on Tuesday noted that at approximately 6.45 am, customers in Demerara and a section of West Coast Berbice experienced an interruption in electricity supply due to a fault on the L4 Transmission Line, which connects the company’s Garden of Eden Power Plant to its Sophia Substation. The company said that the incident resulted in the loss of 46.5 MWs of generation from the grid. The sudden generation loss triggered the protection relays at other generating stations, causing them to go offline.
“Restoration efforts commenced immediately, with the first area restored at approximately 7.15 am all areas were repowered at approximately 8.45 am,” the release said. “Our company remains cognizant of the inconvenience associated with unplanned service interruptions and continues to work towards minimizing these occurrences.”
While GPL is anticipating an average peak usage of around 236 megawatts this year, Minister in the Ministry of Public Works Deodat Indar said last November that the power company has already received unsolicited offers from individuals with capacity and proposals.. According to the subject minister, those offers will be carefully evaluated to meet the growing demand this year.
