96 hours blackout recorded last year - GPL tells PUC hearing

96 hours blackout recorded last year – GPL tells PUC hearing

Mar 30, 2023 News

…moving rapidly towards smart meter system

Kaieteur News – With a total of 80,000 AMI meters installed to date, the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Company, plans to get all the manual meters replaced in the not-so-distant future to make its system fully smart.

This was revealed when the management of GPL made an appearance before the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on Wednesday. During the public hearing held at the Herdmanston Lodge, Georgetown, Divisional Director of GPL, Rhonda La Fargue explained that some 10, 849 of those meters were installed in 2022. She said however, that GPL is looking to expand its smart meter programme otherwise referred to as an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI).

La Fargue said that for those persons without the smart meters and receiving estimated bills, the company is encouraging the submission of meter readings via WhatsApp or its web portal.

She explained that utility company is looking to acquire more handheld devices for its field staff to conduct these readings while some meters are currently being read remotely. The PUC heard that GPL was able to reduce the frequency of power outages by roughly 10 percent in 2022 with its billing currently based on just less than 90 percent of actual meter reading for domestic and business customers.

Divisional Director, Bharrat Harjohn revealed that there were 94 outages for a total duration of 96 hours in 2022.

He noted that those interruptions were due to a number of reasons ranging from planned maintenance to emergencies and including, but not limited to a number of trips in the system.

The company was able to grow its generation capacity by eight percent in 2022 and said the figures on the number of power outages are an improvement to previous years.

Additionally, GPL says it will intensify its maintenance activities in 2023 and use drone technology to monitor encumbrances and identify network defects. The company also used the occasion to clarify that around between 88 – 92 percent of billing for domestic and business customers were done based on actual meter readings and not estimations.

In past, the PUC has imposed monetary fines on GPL over a failure to meet the operating standards set for the year 2018.

According to the PUC, in the reporting year 2018, after taking into account inter alia the failure of the company to achieve its Operating Standards and Performance Targets (OSPT) set for the year, the Commission had determined that a penalty of 5% of the total value of dividend payable to the company’s shareholders should be imposed.

The Commission noted that following a hearing held on June 20, 2019, of GPL performance based on standards and targets set, it was determined that the power company had performed below the goals set.

The report further outlined that representatives of GPL give explanations as regard each standard not achieved.

According to the information, the power company had among other things; set a limit the average number of outages which consumers received during the year 2018 to no more than 70.

However, the average number of outages experienced by a consumer during 2018 was 106. Further, GPL set a standard to limit the average duration of outages that a consumer would have received during the year to no more than 80 hours. The average duration experienced by consumers during the year was 112.41 hours.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), Divisional Director of GPL, Georgetown, Herdmanston Lodge, Rhonda La Fargu

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96 hours blackout recorded last year – GPL tells PUC hearing

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