THE Guyana Power and Light (GPL) is confident that the utility company will be able to deliver stable electricity to its thousands of consumers in 2025. On Thursday last, during its review of GPL’s 2024 operating standards and performance targets, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was assured by Kesh Nandlall, Team Lead of GPL’s Management Committee, that critical maintenance work will be undertaken in the first half of 2025.

This work is intended to ensure the generators are prepared to meet the projected peak demand later this year. The team leader acknowledged that the power company encountered numerous challenges in 2024, as it was unable to meet the electricity demand due to unprecedented growth.

“As you are all aware, the country has been experiencing significant growth over the past years and it has really impacted GPL. Existing customers have been demanding much more power and new customers are coming on…,” he told the PUC, headed by Dr Nanda Gopaul. During the review, the GPL official acknowledged that the increase in demand, largely driven by industrial activity and a lack of maintenance, led to intermittent power outages for consumers. In 2024, he explained that the utility company experienced the highest peak at 207 megawatts (MW), up from 186 megawatts the previous year.

Due to the rising demand, Nandlall stated that GPL “had to react quickly”, adding 124 megawatts of generation to the national grid last year. Nandlall informed the PUC that GPL sourced the additional power from a new plant in Colombia and two power ships, which together contributed 124 megawatts to the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS).

He said, “Adding the new generation to the grid gave us the opportunity to carry out maintenance to the generators and to have reasonable amount of ‘spinning reserves’.”
Nandlall explained that the current installed capacity of spinning reserves is 27 MW, which serves as a backup power supply that can be used if part of the DBIS needs to be taken offline for maintenance.

“We are not having many outages now. We do have planned outages for maintenance work and the construction work that is happening in the country. We have a maintenance plan. We have sufficient power to reach the demand,” he assured the PUC.

By the end of 2024, the company’s generation capacity increased to 267 megawatts.

“In 2025, our expectations are that we will have stable generating capacity to meet the expected demand. However, the challenges move beyond generation. These include other infrastructure, such as transmission and distribution,” Nandlall reported to the Commission.

In the long term, the power company expects that meeting power demand will become easier and that it will be able to generate a profit with the upcoming 300-megawatt power plant at Wales, West Bank Demerara (WBD). This power plant, which will utilise natural gas produced offshore Guyana, is considered the largest public project undertaken in the country, aiming to reduce electricity costs by 50 per cent. The government’s focus has been on modernising, expanding, and improving the efficiency of the national grid. The government has been, among other things, investing heavily in upgrading the infrastructure to address issues.