Latest update November 27th, 2024 12:07 AM
No supply of electricity from Giftland to GPL for almost a year– management confirms
Kaieteur News – For almost a year now, Giftland has been unable to provide electricity to the Guyana Power and Light’ Inc. (GPL)’s grid.
Management of Giftland confirmed on Friday that the supply of power to GPL’s grid stopped since June 29, 2021. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Giftland, Devindra Deonarine explained that there was an issue with the alternator which caused the transmission system to go down.
CEO of Giftland, Devindra Deonarine.
Deonarine explained that the problem with the alternator surfaced a few weeks after the damaged turbocharger was rectified last year.
According to the CEO, the system went down, for a few months between December 2020 and March 2021 but was up and running again until June 2021. He noted that “since then [Giftland] has been challenged with sourcing tools, spares and services to repair, upgrade mainly due to the pandemic.”
This is despite the company having an active power purchasing agreement in place with GPL to supply electricity to mainly communities located in the lower East Coast of Demerara. The CEO claimed however while the purchase agreement is still in force, Giftland only gets paid for the power it supplies.
“Payments are done for power supplied. So if no power is supplied there no payments are due…” he stated.
In the interim, Deonarine said Giftland is working on the problem to have the system up and running again.
“It is only at the beginning of this year that progress was made here and we are now looking to get our [generator] sets back online by end of next month,” he said.
With Giftland’s system down, GPL has started moving in the direction of purchasing power to add to the national grid from elsewhere. Last month, GPL announced that it is hunting for Independent Power Producers (IPPs) that can supply 50 Megawatts (MW) of electricity to the National grid, by March next year.
In an Expression of Interest (EOI), published in a state newspaper, GPL said, 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.
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 company said too, that companies must demonstrate the ability to deliver a complete project and be ready to commission within six months of approval. Importantly, a suitable candidate would have to provide details of a project completed successfully of similar scope within the last 10 years and, have the ability to finance the project.
GPL’s power supplier shall be responsible for all activities, which include transport to and set up at site, operate and maintain the power generating facility, test and decommission, among others.
Recently, the power company complained of its high operational cost, signaling that there may be a need to hike the electricity bills, if customers did not reduce their power consumption.
It was back in October 2020 that Giftland started to supply the GPL grid with electricity.
Giftland has a system that produces 6.7 megawatts of electricity, 5 megawatts of which is HFO [heavy fuel oil] fuelled. However, it only uses 1.6 megawatts during prime operations at the Mall.
As such, Government tapped into the excess power supply to boost the capacity of the GPL grid, which currently has a generating capacity of 155 megawatts.
According to the agreement between Government and Giftland, an average of US$46,000 will be paid per month for power from Giftland. This would translate to some $9.9 million per month to Giftland while GPL will additionally be paying for fuel at around $25.6 million per month. In total, this would work out to approximately $35.5 million per month.
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