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Electricity supply

Oct 07, 2024 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – Last Tuesday night’s embarrassing ‘lights out’ at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence is part of the problem that afflicts this country on anything that relates to power generation and electricity supply.

Although the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) was not the main culprit that caused the global embarrassment, it is part of the problem citizens deal with on a daily basis.

There are some things that are crucial to development in today’s world. One of them is a stable electricity supply. If one is to use this as a measure of Guyana’s ability to compete in the real world then one can easily conclude that Guyana is at a disadvantage. Electricity supply has been so unreliable over the years that some major enterprises here have opted for self-generation. They have imported large generators and they all say that their energy bill is less than if they had to pay the electricity company. This seems to suggest that electricity costs are exorbitant yet the government says that such costs are subsidised.

The current government as well as previous ones has been investing heavily in propping up the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) but the situation remains the same. It has been the case with electricity supply for several decades in this country. With our new found oil wealth and foreign investors flocking Guyana to do business, the demand on the GPL’s network has been great and the government has resorted to renting a powership and seeking the services of another to help alleviate the power supply problem. The administration is also banking heavily on the controversial gas-to-energy project.

Only recently Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips speaking at a business forum mentioned that the peak electricity demand has risen in recent months, noting that around three or two months ago in a meeting, the Guyana Power and Light Inc. told the administration that the peak demand for electricity was somewhere around 188 and 189 megawatts and then later that figure went up to around 205 megawatts. And then we had the Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo   blaming the management of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) as well as the old transmission lines for the daily blackouts citizens are currently facing.

But the power situation has been a bugbear for more than two decades. At one time, the situation was such that there were only eight megawatts in the Demerara Interconnected System when the peak was about 70 megawatts. This was indeed frightening. The power company was reduced to publishing notices informing of prolonged power outages. And the outages were indeed prolonged. People enjoyed more hours of darkness than light. Back then, production declined drastically because in this the electronic age everything ground to a halt. Staff used the opportunity to chat.

People seeking services were always greeted with comments that reflected the extent of the power outage. Then things had improved with the divestment of the power company but only slightly. In the end, the administration concluded that the new owners were more concerned with making money rather than providing a service. The power company reverted to government hands. Today, a lot has gone wrong. Poor maintenance of equipment; improper management of the distribution lines, massive electricity theft and dishonest electricity company workers combined to put more pressure on the system.  In the meantime, thousands of Guyanese on a daily basis cry out for blackouts while the authorities continue to spend wildly to prop-up a failing company stacked with political lackeys.

(Electricity supply)

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