THE Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Inc. has said that it foresees no significant issues around the Christmas season that usually features an increased demand, as the company has already started its ‘housekeeping’ in terms of network and generation maintenance.  Acting Chief Executive Officer at GPL, Mr. Renford Homer, spoke with the Guyana Chronicle Friday night at a dinner the power company hosted to treat media operatives at Grand Coastal Inn, Le Ressouvenir, East Coast Demerara.       Also present at the dinner were Deputy CEO – Technical Elwyn Marshall, Divisional Director- Operations Bharat Harjohn, Divisional Director- Information Technology Vijay Datadin, Divisional Director- Projects Ryan Ross, Divisional Director- Loss Reduction Parsram Persaud, and other top GPL officers.       Homer referred to past Christmases when GPL was able to deliver an “acceptable” level of service and noted that this year’s celebration, just about two months away, is no different. “We do inject a lot of effort coming into Christmas, and well ahead of Christmas, so we do those housekeeping things that would put us in a better position. We have started, and our expectation is to be in a strong state of readiness as we come into the Christmas season.”      “I think outages during that time are significantly reduced, so we don’t envisage significant issues of any nature around that season,” Homer continued.  Furthermore, Homer said GPL is looking to tap into more modern technologies that would improve the efficiency of the services being provided. “We have been making some interventions of late, where we are looking at more modern technologies to better alert us to where some of the faults are so we can respond a lot faster, make those corrections a lot faster, and of course, reduce the discomfort and disturbance that might have been experienced by customers.”

Spate of Blackouts 
Homer offered that the many blackouts over the past few months can be credited significantly to engines that were either out on plan maintenance or those that suffered machine failures.      “What happens in such cases is if we are unable to meet the demand with our generation, then we have to reduce the load on the system in order to maintain the system and keep it up and running,” he explained.       Nevertheless, Homer referred to the return of a fair amount of capacity into the grid which he said has resulted in the frequency of outages being reduced somewhat. “Admittedly, there is still the shorter outages which can be because of other network-related issues that would normally be addressed through plan maintenance.”       He said GPL’s generation challenge mainly contributed to the many blackouts recently. “We had at many times a peak demand in the Demerara/ Berbice and its connected system of approximately 115 megawatts. There were occasions where we just about, in our available capacity, met that demand and in some cases, we were unable to do so. As we monitor the system and there was a clear recognition that we were challenged to meet that demand, then there were certain decisions we had to take and that would have meant relieving and reducing the load in certain areas.”

No targeted areas  
Homer said there is a methodology that the power company uses to relieve the load so there are no areas that are targeted. “You don’t want to just have one area being affected all the time. As our generation returned to a level of acceptable normalcy, then there was a reduced number of outages and we continue to work assiduously to further reduce our outages to pretty much a system where outages are not something that need to really be experienced by our customers.”

No overnight improvements 
Homer expressed that GPL is continuing to inject “every effort” to improve on quality of supply and on delivery of services. “This is not something that will happen overnight. We have come from a system where we were plagued with outages for years and we have seen significant improvements and we continue to inject our efforts to move us to that point where outages become significantly reduced or pretty much nonexistent,” he said.  He observed that improvement of a network and service delivery require significant capital investment and hence it will take a process. “It will be done over a period. It is not something you can achieve and you stop there. You would always have network issues and generation matters to address, because the business is very dynamic and you will have an increase in customers which means you will have an increase in load.”  Homer also noted that any disturbance of electricity is met with a high degree of disgust, because people’s lives are now more driven to a large extent by electronic appliances. “Any disturbance is not something that is accepted as okay. Any disturbance obviously brings about a disruption to operations, a disruption to domestic lives that people don’t find palatable.”