Demerara, Berbice brace for outages … submarine cable goes down

Jun 04, 2019 News

On Sunday night, June 2, the submarine cable which links Kingston and Vreed-en-Hoop power stations developed a suspected fault along sections located approximately 0.5 km offshore from the Kingston operations.
According to the Guyana Power and Light Inc, while investigations and consequent remedial work are being effected, the cable will remain “de-energized”.
“Our Vreed-en-Hoop operation supplies an average of 14MWs of electricity to our Kingston operation for further utilization within the eastern half of the DBIS. In the absence of the submarine cable, our company is unable to transfer this capacity to the eastern half of the DBIS,” GPL disclosed.
“Additionally, two generating sets at our Kingston Power Plant are unavailable due to maintenance requirements. As a result of this, a load shedding exercise is being temporarily instituted (yesterday) evening, from 18:00 hrs to 23:00hrs and will affect the following customers,” GPL said yesterday.
In Berbice, the outages were set to be from Auchlyne to # 53 Village and Bygeval to Seafield.
In Georgetown, the outages would have affected Festival City, North Ruimveldt, South Ruimveld Park and Gardens, Lamaha Springs, Stevedore, Tucville, GuyHoc Park, Lamaha Park, PP QQ Scheme, Roxanne Burnham Gardens and GuyHoc Gardens.
On the East Bank, the outages would affect Garden of Eden to Soesdyke Junction and Soesdyke Junction to Yarrowkabra on the Linden Highway.
“The management of GPL Inc. has convened a team comprising of officials from GPL, deep water divers and CMC to urgently assess the situation. Our Company remains cognizant of the inconveniences associated with this load shedding exercise and will endeavour to minimize the duration. Additionally, we will continue to provide updates as they become available.”
The Chinese built submarine cable has been troubled since being commissioned a few years ago as part of a modernization plan for the aging electricity system.
It was first laid too shallow and had to be recommissioned.
The additional power from Vreed-en-Hoop, West Demerara from a 26-megawatt power plant is key for boosting the Demerara and Berbice grid which is interconnected.
The increase in outages recently has placed GPL under pressure.

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