Environmentalist urges Govt. to pursue solar power generation

Apr 20, 2022 News

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Kaieteur News – In the absence of a feasibility study for the highly touted Gas-to-Energy project and the climbing costs to supply reliable energy to Guyana, environmentalist Alfred Bhulai is urging government to channel its investments into solar power generation.
In a letter to Kaieteur News, Bhulai said, “The hidden costs of the gas-to-power projects are slowly bubbling up: GPL has to find 50 MW of heavy fuel oil generation; and they are looking for some other company to deliver seamless connections without transmission and distribution problems.”
According to him, GPL is caught in an “inefficiency trap”, as it still only aims to deliver electricity at 80 percent power factor, and consumers are allowed to operate at “unbelievably lower power factors”. In addition, he said he also noticed that the many transformers required in this system seem to have no maintenance.
According to him, checks for moisture and oxidation are not done until a transformer blows out to indicate replacement. “There seems to be a normal state of emergency in running things. The gas-to-power project panders to these inefficiencies and lets GPL off the hook. One day the gas will be finished; what then? The immediate answer is to invest instead in solar power beginning with the new housing areas being built,” the environmentalist urged.
Bhulai suggested that 10,000 new homes can be powered by 50 MW of solar energy. He said, “Let people manage their own electric power. 10,000 new homes can be comfortably powered with 50 MW, for which there will be no technical and ‘commercial’ losses. Get rid of the old power line mentality, the inefficiencies and instabilities of which subject us to unreliable electricity.”
On Sunday, GPL published an Expression of Interest (EOI) where it said it is hunting for Independent Power Producers (IPPs) that can supply 50 MW of power to the national grid for three years, commencing from March 2023.
GPL said, “the state-owned electric utility company, invites technically and financially sound IPPs to submit an EOI to supply a total of 50 MW HFO-fired Firm Power Generating Capacity (gross) on a 24-hour basis with appropriate substations to interconnect with the 69 kV National Grid (the project) by March 2023 for a period of three years.”
The power company said that the 50 MW of power will interconnect with the 69kV (kilovolts) national grid and shall be split into two lots of 25 MW per installation. The earmarked 69 kV substations for interconnection are New Sophia and Canefield.
Although the EOI was published, the company was keen to note that the advertisement does not constitute an invitation to tender. It added that only power companies deemed qualified by GPL will receive details, guiding the next steps of the process.
Back in January 2020, GPL inked a power purchase agreement with businessman, Roy Beepat, to supply the national grid with 4.5 MW of electricity. The added power augmented the 120 MW that GPL was supplying to the power grid.
The proprietor of Giftland Mall had stated that his power generating system has the capacity to share some 4.5 MW with the GPL, depending on the time of day. He explained that while Giftland has 6.7MW of power, only 1.6MW is used during optimal operations.
It was later revealed that an estimated $34 million each month was being forked out to purchase the badly needed power from the Giftland Mall, to compensate for the shortfall of electricity. Beepat said that the power itself would cost around $9.9 million per month while fuel cost is estimated to be $29.5 million.
Solar energy potential
In February, during the International Energy Conference and Expo, Head of the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA), Dr. Mahender Sharma indicated that Guyana currently receives enough sunshine every two hours, to power the country’s present electricity demands for an entire year.
He also revealed that the country last year imported some 20,300 barrels of oil daily spending about US$150M to meet electricity generation demands.
Importantly, Dr. Sharma explained 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.
On the other hand, the GEA Head indicated, “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 at the conference, “the potential for solar is huge.”

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