GPL looking to buy 25 megawatts to stop blackouts

Aug 19, 2020 News

By Shikema Dey

Junior Public Works Minister, Deodat Indar.

Prime Minister, Mark Phillips (centre) with Minister Indar during the meeting with the senior management of GPL.

The Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) has announced that they will be issuing Expressions of Interest (EOI) to source an additional 25 megawatts of electricity from private entities in efforts to meet the increased demand to Guyana’s power grid.
Prime Minister Mark Philips and Junior Public Works Minister, Deodat Indar yesterday met with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Power Company to devise solutions aimed at curbing the outages plaguing the country for the weeks.
“In the short term,” the PM said, “one of the most important concerns for the people of Guyana right now is having reliable electricity and a reduction or zero power outages.”
It is for this reason, the PM told reporters, that he has instructed the agency to immediately issue the EOI to source the additional power that is needed from private suppliers.
“I have already passed directions to the CEO to ensure that as we move from now to the end of 2020 and into the first quarter of 2021, all steps must be taken to ensure that we have reliable electricity in Guyana and that we have a reduction in power outages,” he said.
The act of sourcing power from private entities should come as no surprise to Guyanese as the previous A Partnership For National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+ AFC) had done the same via a Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) with the Giftland Mall. Per the agreement, Giftland would supply more than four megawatts of needed power to augment the 120 megawatts GPL is currently supplying to the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System.
Giving an explanation for what is causing the frequent outages, Minister Indar said it is due to the fact that the demand and output are relatively the same.
“If any generator within that entire substation sets that are on the DEIS system goes out,” Indar explained “and that falls below 120, you will have blackout.
Further, he added that if anything happens in terms of mechanical failures or if the generators malfunction, power outages can also occur because there is no backup capacity and this is why extra power is needed for the grid. Minister Indar disclosed that the GPL will also be issuing repairs to generators with the need so that they can add to the current power capacity.
“Whether it is five megawatts,” he said, “whether it is seven, at the end of the day it will come on stream and those will add to the system.”