Construction to start soon on 16mw Hope Wind Farm -GPL to ink power purchase agreement soon

Jun 09, 2019 News

After almost two decades in the making, the first ever wind farm for the coastlands appears to be nearer to becoming a reality.
Construction is expected to start soon at the Hope Beach location, East Coast Demerara.

Project General Manager of Hope Energy Development, Dr. John Sydow

According to Chairman of the project, Lloyd Singh, the US$20M-plus project should take nine months.
It is expected to produce up to 16 megawatts of wind power which will be connected at Coldingen to the network of the Guyana Power and Light Inc.
Singh, who owns the International Pharmaceutical Agency, has been pushing the project for a number of years now but had been mandated to conduct a number of critical studies, including environmental ones.
He said that GPL is being engaged to bring closure to a power purchase agreement, which is key to the project.
The project has been dragging on with little word from the parties in recent years.
Yesterday, a government statement which signalled the project is nearer to a reality, said that the GPL’s power grid is set to be boosted by 2020, with the construction of a wind farm at the village of Hope, East Coast Demerara (ECD).
At a stakeholder meeting hosted on Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), participants were briefed on the impact of the ground-breaking project.

Chairman of the project, Lloyd Singh

Leading the discussions was Project General Manager for Hope Energy Development (HED), Dr. John Sydow, who stated, “We are looking at four wind turbines at Hope Beach. That will supply about seven per cent of all of GPL’s megawatt hours they are distributing. With 40 machines, you would satisfy about 60 percent of all of GPL’s needs without requiring any energy storage.”
After detailed presentations on the impacts of the project on the community, the Project General Manager informed stakeholders that the proposed wind farm project is in compliance with local and international noise level regulations.
“The residents, sleeping at nights, will not notice the wind farm noise, because it is already less than the noise that is already there,” Dr. Sydow explained.
“The noise that is there; we measured it. It’s crickets, frogs, winds in the palm trees that they have around their houses and the general noise that you always have in a community. It’s not that noisy,” he added.

Guyana is expected to have its wind farm at Hope Beach operational by next year, the developers have assured.

The impact tests were conducted at the Hope Secondary School, located some 420 metres from the proposed project site.
One of the concerns raised by participants during the open discussion session, according to a government statement, was whether the Hope Wind Farm would result in mangrove degradation along the shoreline.
In response, Dr. Sydow firmly noted, “We are only going to look at the areas covered by grass. We don’t want to chop down any mangroves, and we shouldn’t have to; and if we do, it would only be temporary to lay some equipment down and that’s the very fringe where you have very short trees. They’re almost six-foot in height.”
Other concerns raised by the stakeholders were the impact of the wind farm on bird species, erosion of land alongside the canal where the project is set to begin, and the involvement of the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission (GLSC) in both the mapping and leasing of the proposed project site.
Dr. Sydow committed to working with the GLSC and assured that an environmental impact assessment will be done to ensure the protection of wildlife.
The Hope Wind Farm Project initially began in 2001, but was halted due to GPL’s lack of the infrastructure needed at the time.
The project is capable of supplying 7,000 homes with clean electricity, leading to fuel savings of 14.5 million litres per year.
Additionally, according to the release, 30 to 40 construction jobs are expected to be created, and $1Billion yearly will be saved in fuel imports.