Govt. to rent additional 30 MW

May 10, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – Even as the Guyana Power & Light (GPL) is working to connect the 36 megawatt (MW) powership to the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) yesterday afternoon Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo disclosed that the Government of Guyana (GoG) is still looking for an additional 30 MW of power to add to the grid.

In order to bring relief to citizens and meet the high demand of electricity in the country, the government through GPL signed a multi-million-dollar contract with Urbacon Concessions Investments, W.L.L (UCI), a subsidiary of UCC Holdings in Qatar, in collaboration with a Turkish company, Karpowership International to rent the ship for two years. In a press statement, GPL announced, “We are making great progress.” It was disclosed that GPL and Karpowership team have completed testing the engines, transformers, fuel, metering and telecommunication systems on the powership.

GPL said that its engineers are finalising testing of the protection relay devices to ensure there is communication between the ship and its Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. The SCADA system will monitor and control the power distribution network to ensure efficiency and system reliability.

It was further stated, “Once completed today (Thursday), the team will commence dispatching power from the power ship to the grid. The power will be injected into the DBIS incrementally, beginning with Berbice and continuing through the various load centres in Demerara.”

During his weekly press conference on Thursday afternoon, Jagdeo said, “Earlier today GPL put out a press statement saying that they are hoping to hook up the power barge today and hopefully that barge will start supplying power from this afternoon.”

The Vice President stated that the government is hoping that the 36MW added to the system would be enough power to end the current spate of blackouts. He explained that the frequent power outages are as a result of unavailability of power because of the poor transmission and distribution system.  Within the past several months, Jagdeo noted that there has been load shedding because there was not enough power to meet the peak demand. “So the 36 megawatt would allow us to meet peak demand and even allow us to go into maintenance of some of the additional units where maintenance was deferred simply because we had no other capacity,” Jagdeo said.

To this end, he made the disclosure that the government is still actively seeking additional power, similar to the arrangement that was signed with the Turkish company for two years, until the Wales West Bank Demerara Gas-to-Energy (GTE) project comes on stream. Jagdeo explained, “That will be able to supply enough power to the country we will have a massive injection of 300 megawatt of new power considering that we are using now the peak demand is about 180MW. That by any standard is a massive injection of new power and from a new power plant too so then we can then put all of these older units into reserve maintain them and keep them in reserve.”

He continued: “That hopefully will definitively solve the power situation and of course provide cheaper power to our people too…” According to reports, GPL signed the contract on April 13 and has already paid a mobilisation fee of US$1 million for the vessel’s rental. The company will pay US 6.62 cents per kilowatt hour as a monthly charter fee for the power ship, and a maintenance fee of 0.98 US cents per kWh, based on electricity generated.

Moreover, this publication had reported the government is actively pursuing funding in the range of US$180 million to US$250 million for the enhancement of the GPL distribution and transmission system. Within the scope of the GTE project, comprising elements like the gas pipeline to bring the gas onshore, the Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) Plant, and the power plant infrastructure, GPL’s distribution system requires enhancements.

Jagdeo had explained that GPL has already submitted their proposal and that government has already indicated that they will fund the project. He disclosed that the government is looking to have the upgrades financed from a loan or approach the National Assembly for supplementary budget.

“It has to be, it has to be done. It has to be done before the middle of the year; we have to get this done in time for the distribution of the power,” the Vice President added.

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• demand, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, Government, shedding, transmission, Vice President

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