2 hours of sunshine can power Guyana for 1 year — GEA’s Dr. Sharma

Feb 19, 2022 News

---

…as country spends US$150M importing fuel for electricity

By Gary Eleazar

Kaieteur News – Inviting conference delegates to embrace a transition towards renewable sources of energy in the future such as solar and literally “drive on sunshine”, Head of the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA), Dr. Mahender Sharma has indicated that Guyana currently receives enough sunshine every two hours, to power the country’s present electricity demands for an entire year.
Dr. Sharma was at the time addressing delegates at the first ever Energy Conference and Expo, on Thursday last, organised by Chairman Anthony White and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Angenie Abel, along with coordinators and venued at the Marriott International Hotel. The event wrapped up on Friday.

He was, at the time, tasked with providing delegates and other stakeholders with an update from GEA on renewable energy projects in Guyana and noted as example, the fact that using the solar panels installed at that government agency’s offices, he is able to charge his electric car on weekends that proves sufficient for his transportation needs during the course of the weeks.
Prefacing his update on Guyana’s renewable energy projects, he noted that the country last year imported some 20,300 barrels of oil daily spending about US$150M to meet electricity generation demands.

He noted importantly that the power supplied by the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Incorporated, through the Demerara Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) only caters for about 78 percent of the citizenry.
The GEA head in his presentation used the import figures to illustrate, “we are still fairly dependent on fossil fuel; our expenditure for those fossil fuel imports for the electricity sector amounted to US$150M in 2021.”
According to Dr. Sharma, DBIS, “the grid that is providing much of the electricity, accounts for about 78 percent of that total cost.”

TRIPLING DEMAND
With this in mind, Dr. Sharma indicated that capacity is needed to meet the growing demand for electricity, a situation compounded by the removal of aging power generation sets.
Dr. Sharma too, in his presentation referenced the assertion promulgated by government officials at the conference that Guyana’s electricity demands will triple in the next five years.
As such, he posited, “if we are to remain on the business as usual direction, we would be faced with high consumer cost, tripling of greenhouse gas emissions and a steady increase thereafter.”
In terms of making Guyana the energy capital of the Region, as adumbrated by Head-of-State, President Irfaan Ali when he took Office, Dr. Sharma noted that the new energy mix is intended to include the use of solar photovoltaic systems, in addition to hydro and wind.
The objectives, he said, are built around the expanded Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), “looking at expanding renewable energy across the country, decoupling economic growth from the use of fossil fuel and approaching a low carbon direction.”
The GEA head noted that natural gas is only meant to be used in the short term, providing the capacity needed at a lower generation cost, compared to the Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) presently used by GPL.
With regard present initiatives, delegates were provided with an update on solar farms already constructed, under construction or to be constructed.
These include a solar farm in Mabaruma, another at Lethem in Region Nine, and one at the Caricom Secretariat, the GEA building and at Bartica, among other locations including 290 government buildings.
According to Dr. Sharma, “the installed capacity for the solar farms alone represents 39MW over the next few years.”

LETHEM 100% RENEWABLE
He elucidated saying, this would be coming from 13 solar farms and 28 solar mini-grids.
This is in addition to the installation of some 30,000 solar home units, among other initiatives.
He noted too that the administration was looking to install two small hydro plants in Lethem, Region Nine that would be complemented by a solar farm, so “on that singular mountain range alone, you have the Moco Moco, Kumu (small hydro power plants) and a solar farm providing 100 percent renewable energy for Lethem.”
Having outlined some of the initiatives, Dr. Sharma indicated to those in attendance that, “we (Guyana) get quite a bit of energy from the sun, every two hours, we get about 430 quintillion joules.”
As such, he concluded that in “one hour and 20 minutes, we receive the same amount of energy that we consume for an entire year, only from the sun.”
With this in mind, he told the delegates “the potential for solar is huge.”
He said that by 2030, based on domestic projections, 30 percent of our energy is going to come from renewable energy and by 2040 that goes up to 70 percent with a combination of hydro, wind and solar.
Dr. Sharma did note, however, that in order to achieve the outlined objectives, there needs to be additional investments into activities such as grid modernisation and qualified his position saying, “it’s important, to get the grid to perform the way we need it, the outages (blackouts) sometimes are driven by those issues.”
According to Dr. Sharma, “a significant amount of investment is needed to get to that point.”
He noted that it is the expectation that government would in future press to utilise solar more and more with the improvements in battery and hydrogen technology, “to get to the point where we can utilise more of this (solar).”

 

 

---

---