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Essequibo Coast, Wakenaam, Leguan, Bartica will not receive electricity from Amaila
…GPL would also have to generate electricity for 3 months annually – Dindyal
The Amaila Falls Hydro Electric Project, whenever it is completed and becomes operational, will not be supplying any electricity to Essequibo. At present the project seems dead but recently the government has been saying that it is only delayed for a year.
The non-supply of electricity would be extended to villages along the coast between Supenaam and Charity, Bartica or the two largely populated islands —Wakenaam and Leguan.
CEO of GPL Bharat Dindyal
This was confirmed on Friday last by the Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL), Bharat Dindyal, when the top brass for the power company met with members of the public to discuss its performance over the past year and the first half of this year.
According to Dindyal, it would have been too expensive to have a transmission line erected and strung to supply that county with electricity.
He said that the cost of a transmission line to supply that section of the country with electricity would be in the vicinity of US$32M
Dindyal in providing some clarifications on aspects of the Amaila Falls Hydroelectric project further told members of the public that based on the projections, for three months annually the water levels will not allow the hydro plant to generate all of the required electricity.
He said that GPL will have to generate about 12 per cent of the electricity requirements for the national grid. This would be outside of the Essequibo region.
The areas between Supenaam and Charity will still have to be supplied with electricity by the Anna Regina generation plant operated by GPL.
Dindyal said that consumers or electricity will not be charged a “pure hydro tariff but a slightly blended tariff.”
Aeshwar Deonarine, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the power company, also sought to venture clarifications on the Amaila Falls Hydroelectric Plant.
Officialdom, including Sithe Global, had said that the generation cost of electricity in Guyana would be reduced by almost 40 per cent down to 11 US cents per kilowatt hour.
According to Deonarine, while the plant will be generating 165MW the guarantee of what would reach the national grid in 140MW.
He said that this level of electricity over a 20-year period at US$122M is what worked out to the 11 cents figure.
Defending a reduction on the actual tariff to be paid by consumers, Dindyal explained that during this year the company is projected to spend US$24.5B on fuel, which would work out to an average of 20 US cents per kilowatt hour.
He said that if the company reduces its average production cost down to 11 cents per kilowatt hour then inevitable it would be reduced.
In commenting on the matter of the hydrology for the plant, the Argentine-based Mercados Report had raised questions over the reliability of the water supply as well as the fact that it was done using data from the Potaro River and not the actual river to be used for the Amaila Plant.
On the matter of the Mercados study done on the hydrology for the Amaila Hydro Plant, Dindyal said that “it is true that the design of Amaila was premised on measurements done in the Potaro Basin which is a contiguous basin.”
He said that what Mercados did was to transpose the data gathered in the Potaro Basin to the Kuribrong River.
Dindyal said that when the study began the accuracy of transposing the data was questioned and “nobody could say.”
In that case, he said that the base points used were reduced when being applied to Amaila.
He said that even with the watering down of the available level of water in the Amaila Basin there was still 88 per cent reliability for the plant during the dry seasons.
This, he said, meant that GPL in those three months would have to generate the shortfall in electricity.
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