THE Guyana Power and Light (GPL) will today commission the 15.6 megawatt expansion to the Kingston Wartsila power plant and delivering the feature address will be President Bharrat Jagdeo. The two new units arrived in the country in May and were transported to the Kingston site where it took some weeks for GPL to install and test them. They should have been operational by the end of last month.
This addition of 15.6 megawatts to the national grid will supplement the 20-megawatt Wartsila units commissioned at Kingston in late 2009, at which occasion the President also gave the feature address.
GPL procured the new engines and accessories at a cost of US$20M and they are meant as a medium term measure until the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project comes on stream in 2015.
The government has rented Caterpillar units totaling 10 megawatts to ensure that there is adequate power until the Wartsila units were commissioned.