ALTHOUGH unable to give that 100 per cent assurance that there will be no power outages during the festive season, the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) has said it is putting measures in place to ensure that Guyanese have a bright Christmas.This assurance comes after Guyanese, particularly those residing in Regions Three and Four, were faced with a series of power outages for the past week.

At an emergency press conference at the power company’s Kingston Head Office, GPL Chief Executive Officer (ag) Renford Homer and Deputy Chief Executive Officer (Technical) Elwyn Marshall explained the reasons for the “unfortunate disturbances”, while unfolding plans to minimise the risk of a recurrence of power outages.

Frankly speaking, Marshall told reporters, GPL is still analysing some of the information to determine what would have caused disruption in the flow of electricity early Sunday morning, and what would have caused the delay in the pursuit of having normalcy restored.

“Since last Tuesday, we had a fair amount of unexpected and so-far-unexplained outages within the Demerara-Berbice System,” he added.

However, in an effort to provide some amount of clarity on the situation, the technical officer said that last Tuesday, at about 20:30 hours, a conductor at the Kingston Plant failure resulted in the line linking the Kingston and Sophia Sub-stations to “trip”, resulting in a total power outage.

He explained that conductors carry power from the generators to the load. In a grid, conductors may be classified as belonging to the transmission system, which carries large amounts of power at high voltages from the generating centres to the load centres; or the distribution system, which feeds smaller amounts of power at lower voltages.

Marshall said it took the technicians approximately three hours to have the system restored to normalcy. Then
technical problems were experienced on Friday, December 16; Saturday, December 17; and Sunday, December 18, resulting in a series of power outages that affected the commercial districts, besides Alberttown, Queenstown and Prashad Nagar, and villages on the East Bank and East Coast of Demerara.

“On Sunday we managed to restore normalcy at probably (about) 08:00 hours, and since then we haven’t had any major outage within the system,” he said.

On the topic of generation and increased capacity, Marshall explained that the once problematic submarine cable has been fixed approximately one week now, and GPL will be moving to capitalise on it.

SYSTEM COMPLETE
“This means that the Demerara-Berbice System is now complete in terms of the capacity in Berbice and the capacity in Demerara are all available to satisfy the demand,” he posited.

According to him, GPL currently has a firm capacity of 104 megawatts of electricity, excluding the generation of power available to the company from the Skeldon Factory. Sheldon has the capacity to generate a minimum of eight megawatts.

“As of today, we have 112 megawatts of generation capacity. Our peak in December is expected to be at 108/109 megawatts,” he posited, while noting that the company’s largest demand is in October, when peak is at just over 110 megawatts.

“So, as we stand, we have sufficient capacity to meet the peak,” the technical officer added, although acknowledging that there is not much reserve.

He said GPL landed itself in this position because there is a unit at the Wartsila Plant at Garden of Eden which is in need of new piston crowns and cylinder liners. The parts were ordered and were available to be shipped since last week, but the air freight company has been unable to make the shipment due to the festive season.

However, parts are expected to be in Guyana today, paving the way for the Garden of Eden Wartsila Plant to be fully operational and add an additional 5.5 megawatts of power before Christmas.

“This would give us a reserve of close to 10 megawatts, which traditionally we like to operate with a reserve that allows for the failure of our largest unit. Our largest unit right now is 8.7 megawatts, so we would like to have at least nine to 10 megawatts (reserve),” Marshall explained.

He said the reserve would significantly reduce the risk of widespread power outages for extensive periods during the festive season. It was also noted that, in the lead-up to the festive season, GPL has intensified its maintenance operation.

Additionally, in response to the picketing exercise conducted by some of its workers, GPL has asked its contract workers to be on standby in case of an emergency.