THE nationwide power outages that inconvenienced thousands of Guyanese on Friday were a result of failures at the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Kingston, Georgetown and Garden of Eden, East Bank Demerara locations, according to the System Control and Operations Manager, Navin Deonarayan.

“I just want to give you a sense of what transpired today [Good Friday],” he said while explaining that at approximately 02:44 hrs, GPL experienced a “total shutdown” and this was caused by a damaged cable at their Kingston location.
“We worked assiduously to repower the system and fix that problem. However, upon reclosing we experienced another failure at that location,” he said.

Deonarayan said that later in the afternoon, the power company experienced another shutdown at the Garden of Eden location.
“That was investigated and we subsequently found what was the issue and we corrected it. We have powered back the entire system this evening and we continue to supply the country with reliable power as we speak,” he said.

Furthermore, he stated that an investigation will be conducted on what occurred and works are ongoing.
Moreover, Prime Minister, Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips assured Guyanese that this issue was resolved and there will be no more power outages for the weekend.
“We’re all assured that the power is now on…. and it will be on for the rest of the weekend,” he said.

On January 4, 2024, according to GPL, a 6.9 MWs engine at the Kingston 2 Power Plant, experienced a technical issue related to the crankshaft. On March 11, 2024, a 5.5 MWs engine at the Kingston 1 Power Plant experienced a technical issue related to the crankshaft and engine components. On March 15, 2024, a 9.3 MWs engine at the Garden of Eden Power Plant suffered a turbo charge failure which was resolved on March 22, 2024.

These incidents resulted in a loss of 12.4 MWs of generation from the Demerara Berbice Interconnected system (DBIS).
“Technical support for the repair of the two engines at the Kingston Power Plants is ongoing and is anticipated to be operational in the month of May 2024,” a statement by GPL read.

Generation from the new 28.9 MWs facility at Columbia is incrementally being added to DBIS. Currently, nine out of a total of seventeen generators are injecting electricity into the grid. In the week commencing April 7, 2024, five generators will be added. The remaining three generators will be added to the grid in the week commencing April 14, 2024.
This additional generation will alleviate the current shortfall.