…new CEO says money will address ‘urgent’ system problems

AMID constant power outages, new Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), Albert Gordon, says the company requires US$150M to address urgent shortcomings in the operating systems of the entity.

“We need to do some major reconfigurations, “Gordon said on Wednesday evening during a meet-and-greet session with the media at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston. Gordon said while the company is working to provide service with its existing resources , it would require a sum of US$110M to first address system deficiencies and another US$40M to fix the generators at the power company.

He said during his first two days here in Guyana earlier this year, the system had shut down twice and according to him, he has identified the major challenge facing him, which is “keeping the lights on.” He said that there are different contributors to the system failing, including configuration of the existing system infrastructure. “Right now there are serious deficiencies in the system that we need to address,” he said. He said that a simple deficiency in the system would be the configuration of the power lines which connect to homes in which he noted that in several instances the lines are connected directly to the generators of the company. “That’s not how you normally configure a power system,” Gordon said. He said that the power is first generated, there is an increased voltage to power lines, the power is then sent to a sub-station and the voltage is then reduced and then distributed to homes.

He said too that a number of lines leave the Kingston power station and if a tree falls on the lines, the entire system, goes down. He said another deficiency is that there is not a lot of redundancy to provide back-up power.

He said that because of the lack of redundancy in the network, if a line goes down or it is taken out of the system for maintenance, there would be a power outage.”So the first priority is to keep the lights on, “he said, noting that a simple malfunction can result in the entire system being shut down.

Gordon noted too that the transmission system which is supposed to keep the power system stable is also configured in such a manner that if there is a fault, the generators will speed-up and trip or slow-down and trip and this would lead to a power cut.
He recounted that last year the entire system had shut-down down 25 times, an occurrence which he noted shouldn’t be. “So that is something that needs immediate attention,” Gordon said.

Gordon said that about 50 megawatts capacity of the power company’s generating capacity is also “very old” and in need of replacement. He said that this often results in failure of the generators very regularly. He said that this results in a very small margin of error which leads to load-shedding.

Gordon gave credit to the team at GPL for providing service to the nation, given the deficiencies with which they are working at the power company. On Wednesday evening, Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson said that Gordon, who started in his new post in February this year, has been briefed on the requirements and high expectations government has of him. He said so far Gordon has “lived-up” to expectations and initial tasks.

He said Gordon has been briefed also on the government’s mandate to be as close as possible to have 100 per cent renewable energy power by the year 2025. Patterson said too that there must have a board of persons to support the ongoing and future plans of GPL and according to him, the names of members of the new board should be at Cabinet. He said that board should be named within two weeks.