Govt. reviewing power purchasing agreement Coalition signed with Giftland

Aug 25, 2020 News

The new Irfaan Ali administration has started a review of the Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) between the previous A Partnership For National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) government and the Giftland Mall. Giftland had announced that it could provide 10 megawatts of needed power to the national power grid.
This was revealed by Junior Public Works Minister, Deodatt Indar.
He said “we have not decided on anything as yet, but the previous agreement is being reviewed.”
Since coming into office, the new administration has been scrambling to acquire an additional 25 megawatts of power to tackle the recent spate of blackouts the country has been faced with.
Back in January, after almost two years of back and forth, the proprietor of Giftland Mall and the previous government signed the agreement that would have seen the country benefitting from an additional 4.5 megawatts of power to augment the 120 megawatts the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) is supplying to the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System.
However, that deal did not move forward due to the protracted March 2020 Elections.
But now that the power is needed, the agreement could see Giftland providing 10 megawatts of power.
Giftland owner, Roy Beepat, told Kaieteur News that he met with the power company and while discussions are still ongoing, he is hopeful that an agreement could be had since he has the capacity to supply the needed power.
Prime Minister, Mark Philips, the subject Minister had recently met with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GPL, Albert Gordon. It was revealed then that while the company has a string of long term goals to ensure Guyana has efficient power, their main focus is to ensure that the frequent blackouts are controlled.
Since then, the request for Expressions of Interest (EOI) have been published in the local newspapers to identify appropriate suppliers that can potentially fulfill the minimum requirements for supplying the firm power generation needed.
The power company said that the present call for EOI does not constitute an invitation to tender and only suppliers deemed qualified by GPL shall progress to the next stage of the process.
Further, they said that the supply of a minimum of 1MW and a maximum of 30MW of ‘Firm Power Generation Capacity’ should come with the appropriate sub-station where necessary, to interconnect with the grid at either 13.8KV or 69KV. Generating unit size shall not exceed 10MW.
According to the project scope, GPL shall only be responsible for grid connection at the point of interconnection with the existing network infrastructure.

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