A failure of planning

Sep 20, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – The electricity crisis in Guyana has now reached the point where it can no longer be explained away as a series of unfortunate technical incidents, because GPL itself has acknowledged that surging demand is placing enormous pressure on the distribution network and causing feeders and transformers to overload.

Peak demand has risen from 221 megawatts last year to about 257 megawatts this month, while GPL says that the network is struggling to carry the load, resulting in increasingly frequent outages and voltage fluctuations. The problem is not just reserve generating capacity, but also that the infrastructure required to deliver that electricity to consumers has not kept pace with the extraordinary expansion in demand. GPL says it has about 265.6 megawatts of installed capacity, but the reserve margin is now dangerously thin and the distribution system is being pushed beyond what it can comfortably handle.

The warning signs have been there for some time, and the government cannot reasonably claim that this development came as a surprise because officials were already acknowledging in June that demand was rising rapidly as new houses, businesses and other developments were connected to the grid. By August, peak demand had reached 242.64 megawatts, compared with about 125 megawatts in 2020, meaning that demand has virtually doubled in six years.

That is an extraordinary increase, and it ought to have produced an equally extraordinary response from an administration. Instead, we find ourselves being told that consumers must conserve electricity while the network buckles under the weight of the country’s development. There is something profoundly wrong with this picture because the electricity crisis is occurring in a country that is earning billions of dollars from petroleum and spending heavily on roads, bridges, buildings, housing schemes and other projects. If Guyana is wealthy enough to finance an enormous development programme, it should also be wealthy enough to ensure that the basic infrastructure needed to power that development is built ahead of demand.

The electricity crisis is yet another example of the failure to plan properly for the consequences of Guyana’s rapid transformation. That failure must ultimately be laid at the feet of the government. What is particularly disturbing is the government’s instinct to turn to ordinary citizens and tell them to conserve electricity, as though the problem was created by households using too much power. Guyana Energy Agency figures show that government itself has already recognised the importance of demand management and has a plan that targets a 20 per cent reduction in electricity consumption by 2030, so the question is why government is not prepared to lead by example now.

Most Guyanese are hardly wasting energy.   Electricity is expensive, and many households already limit their consumption because they cannot afford to use as much electricity as they would like. It is therefore somewhat galling to hear appeals for ordinary people to conserve when government is one of the country’s largest institutional consumers of electricity.

Government should therefore consider an emergency measure that would demonstrate that conservation is everybody’s responsibility, beginning with itself. One option worth examining is a temporary four-day public-sector work week, or some other arrangement that would reduce the number of days government offices have to be fully powered, until the electricity network has been stabilised.

Such a measure would not solve Guyana’s electricity problem, and it should not be presented as a substitute for urgently upgrading the grid.  But it could reduce government consumption and demonstrate that those who are asking citizens to sacrifice are prepared to sacrifice as well.

If government offices consume roughly the same amount of electricity on each working day, eliminating one working day could theoretically reduce their office electricity demand by about 20 per cent, although the actual saving would be lower once essential operations, hospitals, security services and other continuous services are excluded.

The more important point, however, is that government needs to get its priorities right, because there is something absurd about senior officials being summoned to meetings to discuss compliance with procurement procedures and the fight against corruption while a basic public service is failing almost daily. Procurement compliance and corruption must certainly be addressed, but an administration capable of mobilising the entire machinery of government should be equally capable of confronting the increasingly obvious failure to provide reliable electricity. The government should stop treating the electricity crisis as an inconvenience to be endured and recognise it as a serious failure of infrastructure planning.

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

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• electricity crisis, failure, Peeping Tom, planning

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