Giftland set to supply 4.5 MW of power next week

Oct 13, 2020 News

Kaieteur News – Guyana’s blackout woes will soon ease as the Giftland Mall is set to supply the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) with almost five megawatts of needed power by next week to boost the current supply of electricity to the power grid.

Giftland Boss, Roy Beepat

GPL logo

Owner, Roy Beepat told Kaieteur News that the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) set a timeline of October 20, so if all goes according to plan, a total of 4.5 megawatts of power will be supplied.
Once it is completed, it will aid in the shortage of power outages on the East Coast Demerara corridor.
Beepat explained that the power supply will be spilt, with 1.5 megawatts being supplied during the daytime hours and 3.5 megawatts in the peak evening hours.
Giftland’s power system has a 6.7 megawatt output capacity but merely utilizes 1.6 megawatts during peak operation periods.
That excess power will now be secured by GPL through a Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA). Back in January, after almost two years of back and forth, Beepat and the previous A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition government had signed the agreement that would have seen the country benefitting from the additional 4.5 megawatts of power to augment the 120 megawatts that GPL is currently supplying to the power grid.
However, the protracted March 2020 Elections put a halt on that deal.
The country was hit with a recent spate of blackouts, leading the new administration to scramble for an additional 30 megawatts of power. 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.

A recent release from the power company stated that this is just one of several projects GPL has “to maximise the potential of power generation in both the short and long term.” Personnel are currently on the ground working on the connections, and GPL expects to see the project completed by month-end.

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