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Twin blackouts rock Demerara & Berbice
…GPL blames damaged cable, heavy machinery
(Kaieteur News) – In light of the two major blackouts Guyanese experienced over the last 24 hours, the Guyana Power and Light is blaming a damaged cable for the first instance and heavy machinery moving too close to transmission lines for the second.
In a statement, GPL said customers in Demerara and Berbice experienced an interruption in electricity supply on Tuesday evening, following a heavy arching and short circuit at the 69kV transformer at the Kingston substation, where smoke was observed emanating from the transformer panel. It said a technical team was immediately dispatched to investigate the root cause of the disturbance, which was reported to be a damaged cable.
Minister of Public Utilities and Aviation Deodat Indar, Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Inc., Kesh Nandlall and other officials during the consultation.
As a precautionary measure, the damaged cable was then isolated to allow the safe restoration of power. Immediately restoration began in an incremental manner and continued until all the affected areas had power restored sometime around 00:30 hrs. on Wednesday.
Hours later, on Wednesday at approximately 11:19 hrs., the 69kV line linking the Edinburgh and Vreed-en-Hoop substations tripped while transmitting approximately 15 megawatts (MW) of power.
“The sudden loss of generation caused a cascading effect across the grid, resulting in service disruption to customers in Demerara and Berbice. Teams were instantly dispatched to determine the reason for the disruption. It was determined that the disruption was due to the movement of heavy machinery in close proximity to the transmission lines.”
However, within 30 minutes of the outage, power was restored to some communities and full restoration followed in a 90 minutes period after.
In this light, the Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation said it continues to work with the Guyana Power and Light Inc. to maintain reliable supply of electricity.
GPL said it has sufficient base load generation exceeding 250MW to reliably generate and exceed the current capacity demand of 210 MW.
“However, there are instances where the disruption of services results from the operation of heavy-duty equipment including excavators, cranes, draglines, cement pump trucks in close proximity to the transmission lines, negatively impacting thousands of customers. Recently, we have seen an uptick of accidents where the reckless operation of trucks, cars and other motor vehicles resulted in the disruption of service to customers, when they come into contact with GPL’s network,” it said.
Further, “the ministry, therefore, strongly urges all road users and equipment operators and contractors to be conscious of the dangers of operating near GPL infrastructure and the resultant loss of service to customers.”
Working alongside GPL, the Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation, has commissioned in excess of 30 emergency teams throughout the country to address emergencies that may arise.
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