GPL generators sit on wharves for months racking up charges as E’bo Coast suffers

Sep 16, 2018 News

The generators in the background at the Anna Regina site, Region Two.

For a past few months, the power outage situation on the Essequibo Coast, Region Two, has reached crisis levels with frustrated residents staging a protest after continuous blackouts.
Senior officials of the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL), including Chief Executive Officer, Albert Gordon, recently journeyed to the region to calm the situation down.
Residents were assured that before the end of the year, a new power station would be up and running, lending over five megawatts of new generating capacity to a blackout-weary region.
But angry insiders of the GPL are slamming the handling of the Anna Regina project.
The generators arrived since last year and were sitting at a city wharf for months, racking up storage fees to the tune of millions of dollars. These generators were eventually shipped to the Essequibo Coast last month.
The inefficient handling of the procurement of the generators and the timely awarding of the contracts for the civil works at the site is what is being criticized.
GPL had advertised since June 2016 for the construction of a 5.25 megawatt power generation plant [heavy fuel oil (HFO)] fired engine generating sets, at Anna Regina.
The tenders would have been for Engineering, Design, Manufacturing, Inspection, Supply, Installation, Testing and Commissioning of the plant.
The area is located at the same site as the existing power plant that is owned by GPL.
The three containerized base load facility will be capable of delivering up to 5.4 megawatts of power.
Since last year, GPL officials have been tagging a 2017 completion of the power plant.
What is clear is that generators arrived in October 2017 with GPL sending out a statement indicating that it has taken possession of three of the 1.78 megawatts generators and auxiliary equipment.
GPL said then that the preparatory works have commenced at the project site to accommodate the new plant.
The Essequibo coast is an agricultural area that has been saddled with severe power outages in the region for years.
Its power engines are around two decades old and have been experiencing one issue after the other. A decision was taken to build a new power plant.
Kaieteur News had asked GPL for information regarding the new generators and related details but these have not been forthcoming.
A new CEO, Albert Gordon, from Jamaica, has been hired to turn the fortunes of GPL around.
GPL has been battling commercial and technical losses of up to 30 percent and has been under pressure to not only deal with surplus generation but with an aging transmission and distribution system which is now being changed out.

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