Blackouts are Back with a Vengeance!

Nov 03, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Guyanese are waking up to blackouts and going to bed at nights in darkness. The electricity supply has become erratic and unreliable, and suddenly so.

It is this suddenness which has led to suspicion over the real causes of the present spate of power outages. The government first tried to blame companies that were previously off-grid and which it claims are returning to the grid because of the subsidised cost of electricity. The implicit argument, which the government is making, is that companies which were self-generating are now paying more for petrol, and therefore it has become cheaper for them to return to the grid. That makes no sense because the cost of fuel is still below what it used to be when the companies opted to self-generate.

The media should attempt to contact some of these companies that were self-generating and ask them whether they were returning or have returned to the grid and whether this decision is based on the presumption that it is cheaper to do so.

Even if there has been a mass return to the grid by self-generating companies, could this be of the magnitude to spike demand to the extent of forcing blackouts? Or are these self-generating companies being made into scapegoats?

But now we have another twist. Earlier this week, we were told that more than 40Mw was not available in the system. This is another way of saying that there is also generation shortfall. So, what exactly are the real causes of the daily blackouts? Is it too high a demand?  Is it a shortfall in generation? Or is it a combination of both?

Whatever the government says is still going to attract suspicion because of the incompetent way this issue has been handled. GPL should come out and explain to the public what is happening. They should provide the data and the evidence to back this data. If GPL cannot do this to the satisfaction of the public, there needs to be a massive national protest to force the government to provide the data and the evidence in support of the data. Unless the public demands answers and does so resolutely, the government will feel that they can ride out this present crisis.

The electricity crisis in Guyana, now, is creating great distress. Households across Guyana are having to grapples with the electricity woes. They are losing food to spoilage. It is one thing to have a few hours blackout and to hope that the meat and fish in your refrigerator does not spoil. It is another thing when every day, for at least four hours, your power goes and the meat and fish is being constantly defrosted and refrigerated. After a few days of this cycle, the meat and fish will go bad and have to be dumped.

Businesses have their own headaches. They are losing money because they did not expect to find themselves in the present predicament of daily and extended blackouts. The Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry has issued a statement bemoaning the present electricity crisis. In expressing its disappointment over the present situation, the local chamber pointed out that the frequent power outages were “cascading into general underperformance of enterprises” through the loss of productive time and disruptions to production.

The present disruptions have generally caught the public off-guard. During the APNU+AFC, power outages were far and in between. The supply of electricity was stable. Who would have believed that with all the resources at the PPPC’s disposal, that blackouts would have returned with such a fury. The David Granger administration had outfitted many government buildings with solar power systems. These buildings would produce their own power during the day, and the unused generated energy was used as offsets. During the nighttime, these buildings would switch to the GPL. This would have dampened the daytime demand for electricity to government buildings.

Even if off-grid consumers have now returned in large numbers to the grid, this should not have led to the sort of problems that we are now experiencing, unless there are major problems developing in respect to generating capacity. The only way in which the public will get answers to this issue is through a massive public protest to demand that GPL provide the data and the supporting evidence to substantiate first that there has been a significant return to the grid by previous off-grid consumers, that demand has suddenly spiked and or that there are problems with the generating capacity.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• darkness, Electricity, Guyanese, Peeping Tom, presumption

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