THE spate of blackouts and low voltage that were experienced recently by residents on the West Coast Demerara (WCD) were due to a damaged underwater electricity cable.

Although officials at the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) said the issues surrounding the cable were fixed, WCD residents are still complaining of frequent blackouts which last for as long as a whopping eight hours. The cable in question takes power from the GPL’s substation at Garden of Eden, East Bank Demerara; crosses the Demerara River to the station at West Bank Demerara, where it subsequently is able to power the West Coast communities.

GPL’s Divisional Director- Operations, Mr. Bharat Harjohn, told the Guyana Chronicle on Monday that the cable went down on August 7, this year but was fixed on September 20.
However, residents continue to complain of constant blackouts. “It’s like fairy lights. That’s as accurate as I can get,” one WCD resident told Guyana Chronicle on condition of anonymity.
The resident added: “Honestly, the situation is one that is rather depressing. We get power outages almost every Wednesday for hours; sometimes more than eight hours. No explanation from GPL.

“Then when the power fluctuates (low voltage) you have to turn off the main power switch because your appliances are at risk of being damaged.”
According to this resident, the blackouts are not limited to Wednesdays. “On any given day, you have to be prepared to be without electricity.”
But Harjohn is saying that blackouts lasting for more than eight hours usually mean that there has been a planned outage, and that this happens mostly on weekends. He said the ‘Power Watch Guide’ published on GPL’s website and in the newspapers is there to inform residents when these blackouts will occur.

Harjohn said he found it “strange” that residents on the WCD are still complaining of frequent blackouts and would be happy to know exactly which areas are being affected so that GPL can address the problem.
To this end, he is calling for residents to report these issues to GPL. “Any issues whatsoever…call us, and we will address them,” he said, while noting that some residents blow their issues out of proportion.

Meanwhile, just recently, Chief Executive Officer (ag) at GPL, Mr. Renford Homer, told the Guyana Chronicle that GPL foresees no significant issues around the approaching Christmas season which usually features an increased power demand, as the company has already started its ‘housekeeping’ in terms of network and generation maintenance.
“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.

He 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.

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.”