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No more blackout as GPL has adequate power supply – Jagdeo
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo
Kaieteur News- The Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) has sufficient power supply to meet the national demands, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said.
The vice president said that with over 200 megawatts of generation capacity and 67 megawatts in reserves, lack of power is no reason for blackouts.
He was at the time speaking to reporters at his weekly press conference held at Freedom House.
“We don’t expect to have blackouts the way we had because of shortage of power or the availability of power. There may be blackouts associated with faults in the transmission system from time to time,” Jagdeo said.
He explained that though the company is still using the old transmission mains, for the first time in a long time, Guyana has a reserve that the power company can use “as spinning reserves.”
“…this would allow them to take out some of the other sets that have had delayed maintenance and do that maintenance now without affecting the availability of power in the system. We’re expecting, as the President said, better levels of performance now that they have the adequate amount of power to meet the demand.”
He boasted that a great deal of effort was taken to ensure that the company is where it is currently, and the powerships are just a transitional measure until the Gas-to-Energy Project comes on board.”
The Vice President lay the country’s electricity woes at the feet of the APNU+AFC administration, noting that had support been given to the Amaila Falls project, the power challenges would have been solved.
He said the former government failed to invest in the sector, but that changed when the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) returned to power in 2020.
“So, since then, we have made significant investments,” Jagdeo told reporters.
Addressing a question posed in relation to President Ali’s comments recently saying ‘heads will roll’ at the company if the power situation is not fixed by the first quarter of 2025, Jagdeo said the statement was conditional as the GPL was given the necessary tools to address its issues.
Noting that management was “complaining all along, that they were very tight on generating capacity.”
Jagdeo said, “Now that they have that, I anticipate that the President would be looking for performance, and the performance for us is how much they keep the power. It’s not a big, fancy metric.”
Further, the vice president said that the government’s interest is to ensure “persons have access to electricity and there are no frequent blackouts” which he termed as being “irritating and debilitating.”
On December 24, this publication reported that the 60-megawatt (MW) powership has begun supplying electricity to the national grid. The announcement was made by the minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar.
Indar said that the installation of the second powership, docked at the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) at Ruimveldt, Georgetown, was not without its challenges.
He explained those challenges to be, “pile-driving for mooring and wharf facilities to accommodate the vessel, building of a temporary access road, and installation of 3.9km (Kilometre) of 69kV high-power transmission lines through communities and over highways. These steel structures, although seen in developed countries, are now being used in Guyana.”
Despite these hurdles, the team consisting of GPL, the contractor Kalpataru Projects International Limited (KPIL), and other agencies completed the complex work in under six weeks, Indar said.
The minister said that the new base-load generating facility will boost GPL’s capacity to 265 MW, which is sufficient to meet the peak demand of 195MW expected during the holiday season. “I commend the tireless efforts of the teams at GPL and the contractor (Kalpataru Projects International Ltd) who worked to deliver the PPP/C Government’s promise to supplement the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) with new base-load generating capacity.”
(No more blackout as GPL has adequate power supply – Jagdeo)
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