– new Kingston plant to be commissioned early November
CHAIRMAN of the Board of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), Winston Brassington, yesterday told the media that the new Kingston Power Plant will be commissioned in early November. Members of the press were also given a tour of various sections of the plant.

A section of GPL’s new Kingston Plant

Brassington said that the recent spate of blackouts that has been affecting residents will come to an end once the plant commences operations.

He explained that the new plant, which will add 20.7 megawatts to the existing grid in Demerara, consists of three Wartsila 16-volt 32 engines. This, he said, will stop power interruptions due to generation shortfall.

He noted that a number of reasons was responsible for generation shortfall over the last few months, particularly the increase in demand. He said that the month of August recorded the highest amount of generation.

He attributed this increase to the current weather conditions and the development of more housing schemes. Recently the company had to supply an additional 40, 000 households from the same grid.

The Chairman said that this US$27M investment should have been sooner, however due to financial constraints that the company has been facing it was unable to do so. He expressed his appreciation to the Government for lending its support to this initiative.

Chairman of the GPL Board of Directors,Mr. Winston Brassington and Director on the Board, Mr. Narvon Persaud address the media at a briefing yesterday on the site of the company’s new plant.

“The Government of Guyana is very active in supporting this company so that it can improve its reliability and efficiency in its delivery of service to Guyanese,” he said.

He also advised that until the plant goes into operation, customers will be inconvenienced with frequent power interruptions to facilitate the constraints of the current system.

The new Kingston plant will be equipped to service East and West Demerara, via interconnection to Sophia through submarine line connection to substation at Vreed-en-Hoop and Edinburgh in West Demerara.

Next year, GPL intends to add two additional and much larger Wartsila engines.

Each of the engines is capable of contributing 6.9 megawatts and consumes 54 gallons for 1000 units of electricity compared to the old units which are consuming 58 gallons of fuel. (GINA)