THE Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) has reported that a comprehensive analysis has uncovered that a lack of spinning reserves was the cause of the extensive outage that occurred around 22:45hrs last Saturday. The company in an initial press release had pointed to the emergency removal of an 8.7 Megawatt (MW) generator from service, because of the high risk of a fire from a lube-oil leak. However, in a more recent update, GPL said a comprehensive analysis uncovered that the system did not have adequate spinning reserves to accommodate the loss of 8.7MWs and no feeder was interrupted by the under-frequency protection scheme, as the frequency collapsed instantaneously.
“The settings on the under-frequency, load-shedding scheme have since been updated to avoid a repeat of this occurrence. While all consumers in Demerara and some areas in Berbice were affected by this incident, consumers in New Amsterdam and Lower Corentyne, who receive power from Canefield, were not affected, as Canefield was isolated from the grid to complete an upgrade and automation of the substation,” the company said.

GPL also responded to a letter published in the Stabroek News of July 28, 2021 by a former member of the company’s board.
“The isochronous operation of the company’s power plant at Vreed-en-Hoop was activated in 2018. It has not been implemented at Kingston, as an expensive upgrade of the controls is required on generating equipment to complete the installation and commissioning, coupled with service interruptions,” GPL said, pointing out that the board member should be aware that isochronous operation assists when there is spinning reserve available at the plant/s and is counterproductive when the plant is fully loaded, as is often the case with GPL.
The new 46.5MW plant at Garden of Eden, the company said, would be operated in isochronous mode and its availability would enable GPL to operate all plants with spinning reserves to ensure that the loss of the largest generator would not result in widespread outages.