Luncheon outlines plan to meet greater electricity demand
CABINET Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon said, yesterday, that Guyana Power & Light (GPL) will, in a few weeks, have an additional 10 megawatts available through the rental of six Caterpillar 1.5 mw generators. He said that would be an interim measure until the commissioning of a new 20 mw Wartsila generator in August and the coming on stream of the Amaila Falls Hydroelectric Project some time in 2014.
Luncheon, also Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS), made the disclosure at his weekly media briefing, in Office of the President, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown, yesterday.
He said:“Cabinet noted that the growth in demand for electricity was continuing. Cabinet also noted that generation downtime associated with planned maintenance and, of course, the unplanned mechanical factors have contributed to the generation shortfall that has been recently heralded by a spate of outages. Cabinet considered interventions and, of course, the permanent solution is Amaila, in excess of 150 megawatts.”
Luncheon said, in the period from the present to the achievement of electricity generation from Amaila, some additional interventions have been made.
He said GPL will acquire another power plant for Kingston, to be installed and become operational by August, this year.
“More importantly is the period from now to August 2011, when GPL would be procuring six Caterpillar generating sets on a six-month term contract and those will be installed as soon as they are made available. The anticipation is that this would be done in a matter of weeks,” Luncheon said.
He added:“All in all, we are dealing here with the ultra-permanent solution – Amaila – the permanent fixture – the new power generation unit for Kingston and then the temporary rental, for six months, with current implementation, six Caterpillar gen sets.
“The overall expectation is that those interventions will, shortly, see an improvement in GPL’s generating capacity and, therefore, a significant reduction in outages.”