…says no plans to increase tariffs
CEO of  Guyana Power and Light, Bharat Dindyal, says because of high fuel prices, the company spent in the first quarter of this year an additional $2B that had not been taken into the corporation’s budget. However, he said there is no plan to pass on these increases to the consumer through tariff adjustments. “Currently, heavy fuel oil(HFO) is US$104 per barrel. Crude oil is just about US$100 per barrel. Heavy fuel oil has surpassed the price of crude when traditionally HFO is $10 less than crude. So we are seeing all sorts of [fluctuations]. Every dollar increase in the price of fuel costs the company about US$1M a year,” the CEO said.
“We are doing all sorts of things to try to hold the tariffs. We are not talking at this time about increased tariffs. We are talking about managing our situation so that we could avoid any tariff increases,” he stated yesterday, while giving the media a tour of the new site at the Kingston power station where the two 7.8-megawatt generation sets will be positioned.
“We brought down losses last year by over 3 percent. Currently, we are below 30 percent [in terms of losses],” said Dindyal. “We have to continue to maintain our posture and losses and try to achieve continued success,” he said.

New generators
“We thought it would have been wise to offer you an opportunity to look at the equipment uncovered. The first engine is already sitting in its final position. The second engine is actually being moved into position,” he said.
According to Dindyal, when the second engine is in position, the area will be cleaned and an infrastructure built around the two engines, expanding the superstructure, which previously only housed the three Wartsila sets commissioned towards the end of 2009.
“The existing plant is being extended by a further 13.5 metres. We are still working on an August completion. In fact, 95 percent of the equipment is here, but some bits and pieces are still to come in,” he said. The CEO showed members of the media some of the equipment and components on the site, including the radiators and components for the building.
However, the company explained that with the boost in generation that the two new generators will afford, it is not realistic to expect an end to blackouts, since this is not an issue of lack of generation only.
“As for the existing plants, we have indicated that the units have achieved the operational hours due before their first major service. We completed overhaul on two of the units [and] the third unit is due. But we are actually doing one unit at Garden of Eden, which we started on May 20. We had indicated that starting on the evening of May 20, the unit would have been off for three weeks. But in discussions with Wartsila, we have agreed that with the number 3 unit, we will retrieve and overhaul and actually take down the engine until June 3,” he said.
He said that for the first two weeks of the overhaul, the unit will still be in service and come June 3, it will be taken out of operation and the refurbished components installed. “So we actually cut the outage [as a result of this servicing] from three weeks to a little over one week,” he said.
He said when one of the Wartsila units is taken out of operation for maintenance, the company loses 5.5 megawatts of power. “We are in a bit of a tight generation situation. We cannot meet the peak [demand] every night. So there will be some evenings of load-shedding. We did report that we had an incident with a rodent. That night we had an extended outage because we had to do a detailed inspection of the switchgear,” he said.
Asked how much more power will the new generators add to the grid, Dindyal said, “Currently we have about 85 megawatts potential capacity. Currently we have one machine down. This means we now have about 79 megawatts. [The new generators will add] 15.6 megawatts. This not only increases our capacity, but also [reliability].”

Theft still an issue
On the issue of electricity theft, the CEO said that it is still a major problem. “It appears as if everyone who is stealing power had to find themselves before the court and for some people multiple times, before they realise that they should not be stealing electricity. It is not something that will go away overnight. It has to be a long, sustained and focused campaign for this to happen,” he said.
He said that the company is doing a number of things to curb the theft of electricity. “First of all, we are using a special type of meter for large consumers – the Itron meters – in a secure installation. For small consumers, we are pushing the prepaid meter…that does not allow the consumer access to the meter,” he said.
Dindyal said that there have been many amendments to the Electricity Sector Reform Act and they are now more stringent measures that the court can employ to deal with persons found stealing electricity, such as stiffer terms of imprisonment.
“We need to really use those tools to enforce and to try to break the culture. We saw in the past cases where people were jailed and in that particular area [where they live] the message went out and people did not press ahead with wide electricity theft. We have to make examples of people before they start registering in their minds that they cannot steal electricity and just walk away. GPL will come after you. It is only a matter of time,” he said.