THE power outage last Sunday night, which affected most of the coastal areas, might have been due to a tree branch or some other object coming into contact with one of the two high tension transmission lines that connects Garden of Eden on East Bank Demerara to Sophia in Georgetown.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, who has responsibility for the Electricity Sector told that to the Guyana Chronicle in the corridor of Public Buildings during a break in the Monday sitting of the National Assembly.
According to him, in such instances, where contact is made with the transmission lines, it would, usually, cause several reactions. In the case of Sunday, it caused a trip at Garden of Eden and increased demand on the Kingston Power Station which has its own protection system that kicked in.
He said, after Garden of Eden experienced the problem, the Sophia Station then attempted to feed off Kingston which, subsequently, also tripped, forcing Sophia to shut down its operations since it may have lost the load.
The Prime Minister told this newspaper that he received no information from Guyana Power & Light (GPL) Chief Executive Officer, Bharrat Dindyal of any damage to equipment as a result of the trip.
Mr. Hinds was also asked about financial implications for the utility, consequent to the shutdown but replied that he was not informed of any.
But he said Dindyal advised him that they will be revisiting the setting times at the various power stations and this would reduce the occasions of consequential tripping of other generating systems due to a fault at one location like what happened on Sunday night.
Hinds reminded that the electricity network is an integrated one and if there is a trip in one section it will call on the other systems for support. Those systems, too, may be protected and, as such, they all are programmed to kick in at various times.
He added that, depending on how they are set, there could be consequences where they get the worse.
The Sunday blackout lasted for approximately 35 minutes and, with the various Blackberry messengers, it quickly became a topic for the social media site Facebook.