– Assures enhanced electricity supply for expansion, economic growth
PRIME MINISTER (PM), Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips, on Wednesday, said that the Guyana Power and Light Inc. is currently ahead of the demand for electricity in the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected system.
The Prime Minister made this disclosure during a meeting of the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services where he, along with members of his team from GPL, the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) and the Hinterland Electrification Company Inc., provided updates on energy.
Against this backdrop, Phillips told the committee that where the country is today, it can safely be said that “we are ahead of the demand” for electricity in the country’s main interconnected system.
Additionally, he mentioned that the citizens of the nation should be aware that since August 2020, when the People’s Progressive Party/Civic came into power, more than 116 megawatts of power have been incorporated into the power grid.
Nevertheless, in anticipation of the projected rise in demand caused by Guyana’s rapid economic expansion, he emphasised the government’s dedication to expanding capacity by the end of 2024 to accommodate this as well.
“And we are cognisant and we are supporting GPL in the forecast that they presented that they will need an additional 30 megawatts of power before the end of 2024… we are in a very good place now and we will continue to work with GPL so the people of Guyana will be in a better place by the end of 2024 and onwards,” he said.
Meanwhile, to add additional power, Head of GPL’s executive management team, Kesh Nandlall, told the committee that, by the end of this month, the powerplant at Columbia, Mahaicony will be commissioned and will add an additional 8.1 megawatts of power and one of the generation units at Kingston will be completed adding another 6.9 megawatts thus taking the overall available generation capacity of the DBIS to 244.4 megawatts.
He added, “By the end of July 2024 another engine will be available of 5.5 megawatts at Kingston which will take us to 229.9. By the end of December 2024 all of our maintenance issues should be caught up… we have to incrementally bring in these sets to maintain them and they should be available at 245 megawatts.”
Meanwhile, Nandlall indicated that from 2020 to 2024 the price of electricity has remained the same and GPL has not increased same even as the government has indicated that electricity rates for customers will not be increased.
He said, “While fuel prices have been continuously on the increase and we expect it to go [up] to 72 percent, GPL has been absorbing that cost and has not been passing that cost [to customers].”
