GIVEN the large-scale expansion expected to take place with the opening up of lands when the new East Bank Demerara (EBD) alternative road becomes operational, the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) foresees the need for a new sub-station in Eccles.
This was revealed by GPL’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Bharat Dindyal, during a presentation on Wednesday when the utility company presented its 2020 Operating Standards and Performance Targets (OSPT) to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
Dindyal said that the company’s development plan calls for additional sub-stations and additional feeders to better serve the growing electricity needs.
“There is talk of quite a bit of residential and commercial investments between Eccles in the west and LBI (La Bonne Intention) in the East. If this is realized, we are proposing to build a new sub-station in Eccles to provide feeders to serve those loads,” Dindyal explained at the virtual forum.
Dindyal noted that there is need for a number of short feeders to offload some of the longer feeders, as the company works towards a harmonious development of generation, transmission and distribution.
On electricity generation, he noted that there are several projects in the works that will see increased input into the system, particularly with the coming on stream of the Garden of Eden power station which will add some 46.5 megawatts (MW) to the system.
There is also much anticipation for the 250MW gas-to-shore plant that is projected to come on stream within the next few years. GPL continues to work on new sources of generation, as the current supply currently falls short of the total reserves needed in the system.
Dindyal noted that even as the company is focusing on generation, much emphasis is simultaneously being placed on the transmission aspect.
“Developing in parallel is the national transmission grid to deliver that power efficiently and reliably to load centres. Apart from that, we’re looking at the further development of our 69 KV system as a sub-transmission system,” he said.
He also noted that the company is working to duplicate some of the transmission lines to ensure redundant links at certain critical junctions.
“We are also looking at the use of more sophisticated protection systems to ensure that our entire grid is coordinated to act harmoniously and not individual elements acting individually,” he noted.
The company is also focusing on loss reduction. Dindyal noted that some aspects of the loss reduction is heavily capital intensive, requiring it to be done in stages.
“On the loss reduction front, this has been quite a bit of money continues to be spent. Most of the investments in non-technical is not as significant as we encounter with technical loss reduction where we are talking about new feeder, new substations, more efficient transformers, improved load, balancing, improve connections. The network upgrade to deal with technical loss reduction would come at a slower pace due to capital intensiveness, but it would happen nonetheless,” Dindyal said.
