–as GPL announces additional generation sets to arrive in Guyana soon

ADDITIONAL generation sets, which were procured by the Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) to increase power generation, will arrive in Guyana soon.

This was according to the Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar, during his remarks at a press conference, on Thursday.
He said that customers could rest assured that power generation issues will subside after December 15.
Indar related that the issue of power supply began just around the same time as the Caribbean Premier League.
However, Minister Indar said that in 2022 when there was a realisation that the demand for power would increase significantly in 2023, GPL began the procurement process to be able to add additional power to the grid.

At the beginning of this process, Indar said that companies that submitted offers when the expressions of interest were put out were not feasible, as many vendors presented high costs and were interested in contracts of around five years, which goes beyond the time that the Gas-to-Energy plant’s generation would come on stream.
“So, you can’t contract a company to sell you power between 17 to 23 cents per kilowatt hour beyond five years when you’re going to generate power when the gas to energy comes in 2025 at five cents. So, that is the decision we have to make as a government, nobody would want to do that,” Indar said.
After this tender process with the receipt of “uneconomical” bids, the minister said that they went to tender again.
The GPL, however, has been able to procure some 28.9 megawatts of additional generation from Apan Energy Services to the tune of US$27.5 million, and the apparatus will arrive in Guyana soon.

Indar went on to add: “They have indicated to us that the engines that we bought are already serviced and prepared; they are being shipped to the port so that that charter vessel can bring it to Guyana… the expected arrival date in Guyana for those engines is around the 22nd of November.”

Further, six step-up transformers that have been ordered will be arriving in Guyana within the first week of December and this will add to the generation capacity.

SITE BEING PREPARED
The site for this equipment is being prepared at Columbia, Mahaicony, and significant progress has been made as part of this preparation.
He mentioned that when the engines arrive, there should be no issues in having them set up and commissioned. The target date for this to be done is December 15.
From now to December, the spate of load shedding will have to be managed and a massive coordinating team is on board to handle same.
Indar added that this issue is not one that occurred overnight, but increased demand has been placed on the system with a significant increase in both residential and commercial customers being added to the system.

In the interim, to reduce the demand, the Public Works Minister said that they have been targeting those customers who have self-generating capacity which amounts to over 500 customers to generate their own electricity during the peak demand hours.

On Thursday, Vice-President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo during his press conference, said that the government is just as concerned as ordinary citizens about this spate of blackouts that has been happening for some time.

However, Dr Jagdeo noted that while they are concerned just like citizens, it does not mean that the explanations given are not valid, those explanations are quite clear that this is as a result of several things.

Among the root causes of this issue was the lack of investments by the former APNU+AFC administration after they did not go ahead with the hydropower project.
“165 megawatts should have come into the power grid, new power in 2017 through that hydro was killed… they did not put in place any new power plant,” Dr. Jagdeo said.
Added to this, he reiterated that the country is still being powered by plants that were bought by Previous PPP/C Administrations over 20 years ago.
Another issue, Dr. Jagdeo added, was the subsidisation of power when oil prices went up and as a result, most consumers that were self-generating, as it was economically feasible at that time, transferred over to GPL’s grid system to benefit from that lower cost.

The third issue he highlighted as a cause of power outages is the growth in demand. While several steps are currently being taken in the interim to ensure that there is sufficient capacity, Dr. Jagdeo said that the government hopes to definitively fix the issue with the gas-to-power plant which is expected to come on stream in 2025.
“We’re looking for additional power now, but we are trying to fix the issue definitively with the gas-to-energy power plant, it’s simple as that,” the Vice-President added.
Meanwhile GPL, in a press statement early Thursday, said that in order to prevent a total system shutdown resulting from insufficient generation, the company has been temporarily de-energising some distribution feeders daily during peak demand hours to maintain grid stability.

To this end, it was stated that at the end of September, GPL announced that the company had reached a historic peak in electricity demand recorded at an unprecedented 182 megawatts,
“This situation is not unique to GPL, as countries around the Caribbean have recorded significant increases in demand due to rising temperatures in the region,” GPL said.

Against this backdrop, the company related that as part of its development and expansion plan for 2023-2027, demand was projected at 186.6 megawatts in 2023.
While the company acknowledged the inconvenience that the service interruptions are causing, GPL reassured its customers that they remain committed to resolving the situation in mid-December with the supplementary generation.