GPL blames contractor for six-hour-long blackout across country

Oct 04, 2023 News

Kaieteur News – The Guyana Power and Light Inc.(GPL) has blamed a contractor for a six-hour-long black-out that plagued the counties of Demerara and Berbice on Tuesday.

GPL technicians repairing the transmission line on Tuesday

According to GPL, the contractor broke one of the conductors of an L3 transmission Line while conducting unsupervised vegetation clearing in the Friendship Backdam area, East Bank Demerara (EBD).

This incident reportedly took place around 11:00 hrs.

That conductor, said the utility company, connected the Garden of Eden Power Plant to the Grove Substation.

“At the time the line was transmitting approximately 25 Megawatts (MWs) of generation”, GPL stated while adding that the “sudden loss of generation caused a ripple effect on the grid” resulting in the shutdown of several generating units.

This led to the immediate disruption of “service to customers in Demerara and Berbice”.

GPL said, too, that not only was there a major power outage but a grass fire had also erupted after the transmission line fell to the ground.

The Guyana Fire Service had to be called in to extinguish the flames before technicians could have commenced repairs.

Repairs were reportedly completed until 17:15hrs that afternoon.

GPL has since lodged a police report against the contractor and said that it is seeking compensation for the damage to the network and disruption of services.

“Once again, we implore contractors to contact GPL before executing work in close proximity to our network”, GPL said.

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blackout, compensation, contractor, GPL, transmission line

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