CHIEF Executive Officer (CEO) of Guyana Power & Light Inc. (GPL), Mr. Bharat Dindyal acknowledged, last Friday, that there is always a demand for more electricity. He said its provision is not a static business and the utility has to meet continued demands.

“So, every year, we would need to put in 10 per cent capacity but we need to add between six to seven megawatts or we are caught and that is the rate of growth we have to contend with,” Dindyal told a press conference.
He said the demands come from new housing schemes, people who purchase appliances and businesses and, with the Chinese project of $40M, there will be a dramatic quality improvement in the supply West Coast and East Bank Demerara.
Dindyal said GPL must position itself for that growth, as well.
Dealing with the power outage schedule, he said the five per cent occurrence per month is not significant and, for the upcoming season, measures have been put in place to deal with the requirement.
He assured that there is no generation issue right now and GPL is adequately equipped but some things do happen and, to fix the problems, unscheduled outages result.
Dindyal said, in the city, the system is under much pressure and, if there is a fault, it reflects in such a way that GPL loses machines off the grid because of the automatic functions in certain areas.
He said, during the Christmas season, a number of things can happen, like accidents taking down utility poles and contractors and additional crews, countrywide, are available to cope when those situations occur.
Dindyal said GPL has 84 megawatts available and is about to rebuild a three and a half megawatts machine to increase availability to 88 megawatts.
He pointed out that peak demand is below 77 megawatts and the expectation is to see an inter network high, for Christmas, of close to 80 megawatts.
Dindyal said Wartsila capacity is 64.7 megawatts and but GPL is trying to increase the base load reliable supply by a further 15.6 megawatts.
He said, last year, GPL was depending on 34 megawatts for Demerara but the supply was maintained with 20 megawatts. However, for 2009-2010, there was a nine per cent increase in demand which continues to grow.
Speaking about dwelling house fires, Dindyal said, in that event, GPL submits a report to the Guyana Fire Service (GFS) but does not publish it and waits for the investigation to be completed.
He advised that, once a householder recognises that the lights are blinking, it is a sign of an internal problem, perhaps faulty wiring or an overload because people wired their houses many years ago but do not check the wiring regularly.