– meeting Christmas demand only small part of wider solution

AS ‘blackout’ woes continue to be an issue that many Guyanese have grown weary of, Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar, has emphasised that the current administration is working “aggressively” to supply reliable electricity to Guyanese. On Saturday night, the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) announced that ten 1.6 Megawatt (MW) Caterpillar Units were acquired to boost the company’s generating capacity for the holiday season. Three of the units will be installed at GPL’s Sophia, Georgetown location, while another three will be placed at GPL’s Onverwagt (West Berbice) location, a release from the company said. The remaining four are backup sets, in case there is a failure of any of the other six units; they each carry a generating capacity of 1.6 megawatts. All ten units are expected to boost the generation capacity in the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System, which should provide customers with reliable electricity.

In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle on Sunday, Minister Indar explained that ten generating sets were an “immediate measure” geared at meeting the upward demand for electricity which is usually associated with the Christmas season. But, these units utilise diesel fuel. Though this is a lighter fuel oil than the Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) GPL usually uses, Indar said that this is only a short-term measure because diesel fuel is more expensive. “In terms of generating power, it will bring GPL in a decent power (for the holidays),” Indar affirmed but later added, “It is a very small part of the larger energy mix that we’re going for.” It is expected that by next April, four months from now, the new 46.5MW at Garden-of-Eden power plant will be commissioned. Further improvements are also expected in the transmission and distribution system, to build redundancy at the 69 kV and 13.8 kV levels.

Importantly, Indar indicated that GPL’s transmission system has been a huge bugbear, constraining the delivery of reliable electricity. “Those transmission lines are old and they need a lot of maintenance because they didn’t have a lot of maintenance over the last five years, and now we have to do that,” he highlighted, and stressed, “You can’t wait until the infrastructure is totally dilapidated before you do (maintenance).” The transmission lines are the links which take the power generated from the generator sub-stations to households and businesses. Damages to these lines, whether damaged poles or generators, contribute to the occurrence of power outages, or, blackouts as they are commonly called.

Cognisant of these challenges and more, Minister Indar highlighted that works are being “aggressively” done to ensure that the system is ‘up-to-scratch’ and so that reliable energy can be provided to citizens. “We don’t sleep on these issues. Every day and night we’re on them because we understand how important it is to have reliable energy,” the Minister posited. Indar also reminded that the government is actively pursuing the gas-to-shore project, so that natural gas from Guyana’s oil fields should be used to supply cleaner fuel for power generation. “Every single day, efforts are being made in this direction to make sure that we have reliable power, and so the grid is sized big enough to deal with the expansion of the country,” Indar affirmed. Since assuming office in August, the current administration said that it would be looking to capitalise on the associated gas deposits from Guyana’s oilfields to allow Guyanese to benefit from cheap electricity, among other things. In August, Vice-President, Bharrat Jagdeo, said the government plans to move ‘swiftly’ with the gas-to-energy project, as their intention is to deliver the promise of cheap electricity, which was made to Guyanese.