How much time should one be given to make power supply in this country stable? Five years? Ten, 15, 20? Less or more? Well, even the supporters of the PPP/C government will acknowledge that it has had the grand total of 26 years interrupted only by APNU+AFC’s five years which could not materially alter the trajectory of the tortured power supply in the country.
While generation has vastly improved from the PNC’s days of a peak of around 30 MW and days of power outages, new purchases have come at a hefty cost for taxpayers and with great losses due to poor planning and management.
No part of the PPP/C’s hierarchy is spared of the responsibility for has happened. Under Presi-dent Cheddi Jagan, 1992 to 1997 was a period characterised by ill-advised hirings such as that of Archibald McDonald as General Manager. President Sam Hinds initiated the start of privatization involving SaskPower of Canada but this deal collapsed under the tumultuous presidency of Janet Jagan.
President Bharrat Jagdeo presided for nearly half of the 26 years from 1999 to 2011 and in terms of management nothing changed. A privatization deal which transformed the Guyana Electricity Corporation to Guyana Power and Light and involved the Commonwealth Develop-ment Corporation and ESBI of Ireland eventually fell apart leading to local management reigning or mismanaging. There was no significant change during the Presidency of Donald Ramotar from 2011 to 2015 which was characterized by the failure to secure approval for the Amaila Falls hydropower project. All through this period Prime Minister Hinds was the point man for electricity as is the case currently with Prime Minister Phillips.
The year 2024 finds GPL in disorder with the usual litany of explanations for frequent equipment breakdowns, line problems and shutdowns of the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System. Arguably the stablest supply of power over the period under consideration was from the Finnish company, Wärtsilä-managed sets at Garden of Eden. The non-renewal of its management contract may be the most significant negative impact of the Granger administration on the stability of power.
Approaching four years since he took office, President Irfaan Ali has to be held accountable for the poor and unstable service. Citizens are tired of the excuses from the government and GPL. They do not want to hear that GPL suddenly found out late last year that peak demand was exceeding generation requiring them to hustle to Honduras to purchase 17 used, carbon fuels generators for a whopping US$27m. To top it all, it had been promised that all the generators would have been online in December last year. To date, some are still to be activated. By the way, who is the General Manager/CEO/ head honcho of GPL? Or is this an El Cid operation being run here?
Aside from the disgust of the people at the failure of successive governments to get on top of GPL’s problems and ensure stable supply, there is even more need to worry over the next two years. While the government unendingly prates that its gas to energy project will cut power costs in half, there is no certainty that the present transmission system will deliver with efficiency and that the current travails being experienced will not vitiate the savings expected. The promise of a 50% savings will be closely examined as should the current cost of production for a pound of sugar which the government avoids addressing as it needs to fulfill an electoral promise to its constituency. What is the current cost of production for a pound of sugar?
But back to power. On October 24, 2016, Stabroek News editorialised as follows:
“What continues to be a major concern for GPL and the country is the poor state of the transmission and distribution (T&D) system. Therefore, no matter how much power is produced by GPL generators, GPL’s customers face a risk of the loss of power even if for short periods. One of the worst manifestations of this would have been on October 18 when there were three distinct shutdowns of the DBIS within four hours and there was loss of access to a whopping 32 megawatts of power or 23 % of total generation. This led to lengthy emergency blackouts in various parts of the country.”
On December 13, 2021, Stabroek News editorialised as follows: “Absorbing what Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Chief Executive Officer, Bharat Dindyal had to say last week about electricity supply would have left many consumers shaking their heads and wondering whether time had stood still.
“The problems remain the same: decrepitude in the transmission and distribution (T&D) system, continued shutdowns of the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) and rampant theft of electricity.
These shortcomings would have been very familiar to Mr Dindyal in his previous stint at GPL and one wonders what new solutions are being devised for the chronic problems besetting the sector…
“Compared to the disastrous 1980s when the then Guyana Electricity Corporation suffered complete shutdowns that left large sections of the grid without power for days and blackouts were a daily occurrence, the situation is much improved. These improvements have however come through expenditure of large amounts of taxpayers’ money on new generating plants and costly loans.
A lot of money is frittered away annually via the inefficiencies of the T&D system and GPL has not been able to significantly cut technical and commercial losses over the last 20 years. It has failed to meet the benchmarks set year after year to reduce losses and particularly on the T&D side there is no clear way forward.
“A Chinese-funded project for substations has not led to the results expected and concerns had been raised during the tenure of former CEO Albert Gordon that aspects of the project were not executed correctly. The loan for this substation project has to be repaid as has been the case with large credits from multilateral financing institutions particularly the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). If one were to examine the large sums poured into the electricity sector here over decades, searing questions would be asked of the IDB’s policy and whether its financing had achieved any of its inscribed objectives.
Expensive management contracts, consultancies and a fruitless privatisation are just some of the major measures that have failed to yield fundamental change at the utility over the years. A new round of aid is being disbursed through a multilateral facility involving the European Union and the IDB, the Power Utility Upgrade Programme (PUUP). At last word, another financier, the Islamic Development Bank has had to step in with bridge financing for the project. The PUUP is part of GPL’s development and expansion and aims to reduce the overall losses in the power system. It would be interesting to hear from GPL and the financiers what has been achieved this far”.
Very little has changed as could be gauged by what happened early on Good Friday. The GPL release issued on March 30th said: “On March 29, 2024, at approximately 2:44 hrs, Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) experienced a trip at the Kingston Power Plant. Restoration of service immediately commenced. At 3:20 hrs, while attempting to repower the affected areas, we experienced a system disturbance at that plant. A team of technicians, upon subsequent examination discovered a severely damaged cable which affected the 69kV power transformer at Kingston.
“At the time, the Kingston facility was generating 44.9MWs. The loss in generation activated the protection systems at the other generation stations causing those generators to go offline, leading to a widespread outage. Restoration recommenced and repair works thereafter. At approximately 5:07 hrs, all areas were repowered.
“Subsequently, at 17:55 hrs, a second fault developed at the Kingston location, which de-energized the earlier repaired cable. At the time, the Kingston facility was generating a total of 40.4 MWs. Consequently, service to customers in Demerara and Berbice was disrupted”.
No one could possibly bet on GPL to get it right. It has not demonstrated the managerial competence and its maintenance of its generators is clearly below par. Decisions have to be made except that the same thinking and mismanagement that has prevailed for 26 years is likely to continue.
