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Over 12,000 affected by unexpected blackouts…
New substation at Garden of Eden to reduce black outs – GPL
Over 12,000 customers were on Tuesday night affected by black out due to unexpected weather which saw a number of power lines being damaged on the East Bank Demerara.
At a press conference which was held at GPL’s, Boardroom, 91 Duke Street, Kingston, was aimed to discuss measures that will be implemented to mitigate the impact of the quality of service during the inclement weather.
Chief Executive Officer of GPL, Bharrat Dindyal, said that a weather system which descended on Guyana came with high winds and
From left Elwyn Marshall, Shawn Hamlet and Bharrat Dindyal.
heavy rain and caused a number of network problems in Georgetown and East Bank Demerara, on Thursday.
The Chief Executive Officer added that this action caused thousands of consumers to be without power for lengthy periods. He added that contractors and technicians were deployed to the affected areas on Thursday night to rectify the issues.
Dindyal also said that GPL was able to restore power to some areas but there are still a number of districts without power. The Chief Executive Officer however assured that full power would have been restored by 4:00 pm yesterday.
According to the Divisional Director of Operations GPL, Elwyn Marshall, he said that residents of East Bank Demerara, Diamond, Garden of Eden to Hope; along the Soesdyke/Linden and some areas of Georgetown were affected by power outages.
Marshall added that in order to restore power, GPL had to use a feeder from the Sophia Substation to supply power to consumers along the East Bank. The Director added that due to another problem with another feeder from the Garden of Eden substation, technicians had to “double up” on the load.
Network Manager of the power company, Shawn Hamlet told members of the media that the areas still affected were Houston, Mocha, Farm, Agricola, Diamond, Garden of Eden, Land of Canaan, Pearl and Yarrowkabra.
Hamlet also said that because of additional resources the company was able to gather, contractors were able to replace a pole that had fallen in Houston, thus restoring power to the neighbouring areas.
“These high winds not only knock down poles but they compromise a lot of structures,” Dindyal said.
He added that the coming days will see poles starting to show that they have been broken and they will start to lean. Dindyal said that GPL will have their necessary resources available for the upcoming two weeks.
In speaking about GPL’s Infrastructural Development Plan, Dindyal said that the company is constructing a new substation at Golden Grove which will be completed and come online in September or October.
The Georgetown substation is set to be completed next month.
The CEO added that the feeders from the new substation will cover the gap between Garden of Eden and Sophia. He added that new substation will also see four new circuits coming out of it.
“For instance if something like this occurs again, we will have the ability to utilize all the 14 circuits to provide power,” Dindyal said. He added that the company is now “handicapped” by having one cable from Garden of Eden to Sophia; but now with them being inclined and injecting a substation that has four feeders, that will allow the company to do better for their consumers.
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