Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Power and Light Inc., Bharrat Dindyal, has said that consumers will see vast improvements in that utility company’s quality of supply of electricity as development projects to boost electricity supply for 2012 are rolled out. Giving highlights on impending developments on Friday, Dindyal told the Guyana Chronicle that GPL will undertake the US$40M Chinese project for which most of the equipment will leave China in December this year.
Dindyal added that GPL also has the project for the West Demerara interconnection, and that the 69KV cable will be shipped here in November this year. All the equipment will be here in late January 2012, and the expectation is that GPL will then be in a position to move ahead with the work it has to do.
By the end of next year, he said, a lot of these facilities will be completed, with exception of the Edinburgh Sub-Station, which will be completed with the transmission interconnection between Edinburgh and Vreed-en-Hoop sub-station.
Dindyal noted that the West Demerara interconnection will also be completed by then.
He said, “We have an extension of the Kingston sub-station and the new sub-station in Georgetown, which is located next to the North Ruimveldt Multilateral School. Most of these facilities, we are hoping, will be completed or significantly (advanced); so, overall, we (are) looking for completion in June 2013, but we would be pushing to see how much we get completed next year.”
Dindyal disclosed that, for the end of the year, consumers in West Demerara and parts of Georgetown, East Bank and East Coast Demerara should see a vastly improved quality of electricity supply.
The GPL CEO pointed out that GPL’s new control centre, which will be at Sophia, would probably be completed in early 2013, and GPL will then have an adequate supply of 15.6mw generation in Demerara, which will improve the quality of supply to consumers.

Power disruption
Commenting on power disruptions, Dindyal told the Guyana Chronicle that things happen from time to time. As such, last weekend, a machine tripped at the Wartsila Plant at Kingston. It was a minor problem which should have been monitored, but as these things arise, the company fixes them.
He said: “We have lightning strikes on our transmission lines between Garden of Eden and Sophia, which is something we have noticed has become a feature whenever there is lightning activity. Transmission lines get hit, and when that happens there is power disruption in Demerara; but we are looking at rushing in some equipment, such as surge diverters, to instal in the transmission lines to give us some protection against lightning activity.”
Dindyal stated that, as it relates to network problems, GPL is hoping to have a session with the media in which the entity will try to educate consumers on the performance of the network, maintenance of the network, and what consumers can do as recipients to assist GPL, allowing the company to fix problems quickly. Because the majority of the problems arise in the network, consumers have a significant role to play in assisting GPL in monitoring the network, and intervening on a timely basis to fix these problems.

Rainy season cautions
Mr Bharrat Dindyal said that a number of things happen when it rains, causing structures and poles to move. As such, the sodden conditions cause trees to fall and lean into high-voltage lines, and poles that might have been defective get soaked and crash.
As for the areas in which there is electricity theft, Dindyal noted that if illegal connections are on the ground when the area is flooded, they pose imminent danger to the whole community.
He urged all home owners in such situations that, in event of a flood, they should take off the power to their houses. GPL would, moreover, monitor flood-hit communities with the aim to disconnect power as a safety precaution should illegal wires be seen on the ground.
Dindyal said, “We have other challenges, like bamboo and vines in the backdams which are affecting our transmission lines, and we have to go in these adverse conditions and monitor (the lines), but we have contractors working on the transmission lines in Berbice. So the work becomes a lot more difficult, and the number of emergency calls would increase significantly during the rainy seasons; but the emergency crews are working 24 hours.