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Bulk of GPL’s $3B Operations & Maintenance fees paid to private partners – Dindyal
Kaieteur News – The Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) this year spent some $3B for its annual Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs, the bulk of which was paid over to private partners of the utility company, who were engaged in the management of some of its electricity generation capacity.
\GPL’s CEO, Bharrat Dindyal (right) and Bharat Harjohn, the entity’s Divisional Director of Operations
This was disclosed by the Company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Bharrat Dindyal, who briefed media operatives this past week on the entity’s preparedness for the Christmas Holidays.
According to Dindyal, the power company expended some $600M internally this year for O&M expenses.
“Our maintenance cost this year is over half a billion dollars. It is broken down into O&M fees.
He explained a significant part of the maintenance cost, the $3B expenditure, is actually paid for the management of the generation facilities at Kingston, Georgetown, Garden of Eden (GoE) on the East Bank Demerara, and the Vreed-en-Hoop location, West Bank Demerara (WBD).
The Kingston Facility is managed by Power Producers and Distributors Inc (PPDI), while the GoE plant is managed by Wartsilla.
“Internally for GPL,” Dindyal disclosed that its O&M expenditure “would be probably over $600M.”
PPDI was incorporated by the coalition A Partnership for National Unity, Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) administration which had removed the Wartsilla arrangement since it was proving costly.
That arrangement was scrapped and PPDI was incorporated in 2016 with the local former Wartsilla employees.
There has been no public announcement that a new arrangement had been inked with Wartsilla, prior to Dindyal’s announcement.
Expanding on the O&M undertaken by GPL thus far for the year was the power company’s Division Director of Operations, Bharrat Harjohn.
Slated for completion on December 15—before the team’s transition into emergency response mode—Harjohn noted that “some of the areas we would have touched on in preparation for the holiday season, we would have replaced defective line hardware; we also replaced defective poles, we would have serviced our switches, our transformers.”
He added that this includes the 69KV transmission lines and the primary distribution feeders and substations.
Elaborating on the process, he said it takes into account generation to substation, then to transmission network, back to a substation, thence to the transmission network again, before reaching the customer.
“We would have touched on all areas in the process in terms of making sure that each component in that process is healthy for the holiday season.”
Additionally, he cited the clearing of vegetation among other areas that would have been included in the power company’s maintenance program.
The bulk of the maintenance, however, was not aimed at reducing the 26 percent losses—technical and commercial.
During that press engagement, Dindyal told media operatives that the investments in maintenance were targeting the reliability of the system and, as such, would not impact on the system losses significantly.
The CEO conceded that the power company currently experiences technical and commercial losses at some 26 percent.
He quantified this to mean some G$16B being lost annually.
According to the GPL CEO, the company loses some $5B directly related to the theft of electricity. This is in addition to losses incurred as a result of tampering and other mechanisms.
Additionally, he said, the technical line losses amount for some 11 percent of losses.
As such, it would mean that GPL loses in excess of 18MW directly due to the aged transmission and distribution network.
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