Weather, other anomalies affect power generation on West Demerara

Sep 26, 2010 News

…residents frustrated over erratic supply

There is no problem with the generation capacity for the Guyana Power and Light Inc. as it relates to supplying residents of the West Coast Demerara, but a series of weather-related problems along with some other anomalies saw a series of power outages hitting that district in the past week.

Contacted yesterday, Chief Executive Officer of GPL, Bharat Dindyal, said that it is a tricky situation that has to be managed carefully. He explained that on one occasion there was a heavy spring tide that flooded the generation plant at Versailles and the company had to shut it down.

He said that GPL has since acquired pumps to deal with that situation.

Dindyal explained that weather wreaked havoc on the networks, with trees damaging connections and transformers being affected also.

He said, too, that the feed that comes from the Garden of Eden plant and which is rerouted, comes from a very long link and any fault along that line will compromise the system.

A source at the power generation company pointed out that the real source of the problem is yet to be identified. The source said that at present any little glitch causes the entire system to shutdown, “even if a car hits a utility pole.”

It was pointed out too that there are the Caterpillar generating sets at the Versailles plant and there is no base load. This set is supported by some mobile generators at Leonora.

The source said that it is not normal for the entire system to completely shut down because of any small glitch. GPL is seeking to assess the true nature of the problem.

Over the past week the residents made a barrage of complaints about power outages.

One resident said, “These blackouts are not scheduled blackouts and so we have no idea when to expect them…It is almost every day for the past few weeks that we have been experiencing power outage after power outage with no explanation from GPL.”

Another frustrated resident questioned, “Are we supposed to just endure this…We pay our bills like everybody else and if we don’t pay they will be swift to disconnect, I’m sure.”

Another resident said that one evening there were at least six power outages. “It was like fairy lights…on for five minutes, and by the time you think it was safe to plug in your appliances again the lights were off again.”

One person recalled, “It was just the other day that a house burn down at Crane Housing Scheme, West Coast Demerara, and residents claimed that they saw the GPL wire sparking moments before the fire erupted…All we need is for GPL to deal with whatever is the problem.

“It is no longer a question as to whether there is a problem; we know there is a problem and we need GPL to fix it.”

Another homeowner related to this newspaper that she had a nightmarish morning one day during the past week before heading to work. It was explained that as the homeowner was about to leave home, strange sounds could be heard emanating from the transformer for her fridge and upon inspection, she realized that the power supply had been fluctuating.

Fearful that it may cause damage, she said that she quickly rushed to unplug every single appliance in the house but could not unplug the fridge out of fear that her food supplies, including meat, would spoil. She took small comfort in the fact that the transformer might trip and save the fridge, should there be a power surge.

Dindyal yesterday said that the ultimate fix to the problem will be the high tension addition to the network by the Chinese which should be fully installed sometime next year, and until then, the situation has to be carefully managed.

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Weather, other anomalies affect power generation on West Demerara

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