… as new GPL board installed

WORK to improve the power supply system of the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) will be progressing since the company is receiving funds to do so.

This is according to Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson, who was, on Wednesday, speaking at the installation ceremony for the new Board Members of the power company.

Minister Patterson underscored that the government is cognisant of the difficulties being faced.
As such, he affirmed, “the government has committed to making the necessary funding available.”

The minister noted that the Climate Mitigation Ministry of Norway wrote to confirm that Norway has agreed to transfer the US$80M (or $16B), which was previously earmarked for the Amalia Falls Project, to finance the construction of 30 megawatts of solar photovoltaic farms with storage.

“That I think is a significant boost to the company and obviously you have to put it on your front burner as well,” he said to the board members.

The minister also highlighted that there is potential for Guyana to tap into funding in excess of US$100M, from an undisclosed multilateral funding organisation.

According to Patterson, the Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, who is attending the Inter-Development Bank’s Board of Directors meeting, has begun discussions with this organisation. The funding body is “quite prepared” to make a “sizeable investment” towards GPL’s transmissions and distribution capabilities and in renewable energy, Patterson shared.

However, accessing these funds would however require that the GPL Board and management work together very quickly to make submissions to the body.

“I want to urge you as your first option to work with the GPL management. We have a two weeks window to get our submissions in and once it’s in, it will point in the direction we want to go,” he said.

Patterson also shared that funding from the UAE has been also approved. This will be used to make Wakenaam one of the first “totally green, off-grid centres”, which will be a hybrid system between the solar power and storage system.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Albert Gordon, related at a recent forum that GPL’s system faces a myriad of issues. There is an inadequate generating capacity, coupled with a transmission and distribution system that is poorly configured.

In 2017, the system experienced a total of 25 shutdowns. In 2018 that figure had been reduced to 12, even though the company had to contend with the very same system and its inherent flaws. Between September of 2018 and now, the system has experienced about six shutdowns; five of these occurred over the past five weeks.

The “heart of the problem” of these recent shutdowns, according to Gordon, has been identified as the sole transmission line between the Kingston and Sophia substations and the Vreed-en-Hoop substation.

More recently, two of GPL’s submarine cables were damaged due to maritime mishaps. The power company also noted that two generating sets at the Kington Power Plant were unavailable due to maintenance requirements.

The CEO disclosed that it will require approximately US$150M to “just get the basics done” in fixing the system, but also related that so far, GPL has been able to secure US$26M to work on the Kingston to Sophia transmission line.

Gordon also noted that funds have been secured from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to build a “backup line” for the Kingston to Sophia transmission line and a US$20M loan from the Islamic Development Bank to “reconfigure” some of the existing substations.