Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) is going after those who illegally install street lamps in front of their houses and the power company has held a series of meetings with Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) in a effort to resolve the issue.

Chief Executive Officer, Bharat Dindyal on Friday during a media tour of the Sophia Complex said that street lighting and the NDCs will be on the agenda  on Friday when a meeting is planned.
The GPL official stated that they began several meetings last year with the NDCs.
He added that the NDCs owe the power company a lot of money for street lighting and some persons have seen it fit to install street lamps affixed to their houses and GPL will remove these  once the customer does  not enter into a payment plan with GPL.
Dindyal advised such persons to visit GPL and sign up for a contract in which they can pay for the charges of the street lamps they are using.
He said, “Unfortunately, that does not address how much they owe us right now.”
Dindyal noted they are also looking at the possibility of prepaid meters for street lights and they have seen the technology used in Germany where credit from one’s cell phone is used to power street lamps.
He said that the people who are benefitting from those lamps should pay. “We are looking at the technology which is quite expensive but it makes sense and also we’re looking at solar lamps for housing developments.”

Electricity Theft
Dindyal told reporters that GPL incurs most losses in several areas and the company had a profile done by geographic areas.
Surprisingly, Sophia stands out and  North and South Ruimveldt are concentrated areas where electricity theft is occurring.
He noted that when they started the prepaid metering programme in North Ruimveldt it was in an effort to form partnerships with customers since GPL’s losses were at an average of 31%.
Dindyal said further that commercial businesses owe GPL millions and they collect 99.5% of the billing.   He said, “You can understand the extent of what is happening and if we were not collecting that we would have been in serious trouble and for the business community some months we collected 107% of the billing and that is recouping arrears.”
For commercial businesses, he added,  the disconnection of their service is relatively easy and simple to monitor.

Power Outages – Frequency Conversion
Explaining the issue of power outages, Dindyal said that they have had many complaints but pointed out that power outages are necessary and unavoidable because of current special projects such as the frequency conversion of supply from 50 to 60 hertz.
He noted two projects which are impacting power supply are the frequency conversion of the 60 hertz in the city and the conversion of the 22 megawatt power plant at Kingston which started in February.
Dindyal explained that in Georgetown they do not have any 50 hertz generation currently and they have been working in an incremental fashion in the city and their transmission and distribution department are also installing new transformers that is 60 hertz 30.8KV transformers.
He said that GPL has been having discussions with consumers in those areas as to when will be an appropriate time for them to take off the power to facilitate the frequency conversion of supply from 50 to 60 hertz.
Dindyal pointed out that to say that blackouts will be a thing of the past is not possible since they have to do line maintenance, and there are accidents that damage utility poles and repairs have to be effected.
He said that the frequency converters include losses which are $300M annually and as soon as the frequency conversion is completed they will be saving $300M a year in losses.
He stated that three shutdowns happened since the Chinese project began in which they are expanding the sub-station which will power from North Ruimveldt to Colombia, East Coast Demerara and Edinburg, East Bank Demerara and it was unavoidable because they considered the safety issues involved and the equipment had to be installed.
Meanwhile, Kempton France, GPL System Control Engineer at the Sophia Complex on Friday explained the works being carried out by the power company, and he displayed diagrams relating  to the frequency conversion.
He stated that the frequency conversion is necessary and the upgrade will see consumers receiving a better quality supply of frequency and voltage.