Guyana Power and Light (GPL) will have the capacity to supply adequate power throughout the Christmas season but cannot guarantee that there will be no blackout during this season due to technical and accident-related issues.
This is according to Divisional Director of Operation, Bharat Harjohn, who said during a press conference on Wednesday, GPL with its system set up and fuel capacity, the country can have its lights on all through the holiday.
Only if the system fails or there is a possibility of someone damaging the power supply chain will there be an outage.
“From a generation standpoint, we have enough reserve capacity. At Garden of Eden, we have a 46-megawatt plant there, which is a new plant. We have a 22-megawatt, which is the BP one and we have another six megawatts small plant.
But most of the power has to supply Georgetown for our control centre and then move up east. So if our transmission line fails us for some reason from bringing that power to the control centre or to Sophia for distribution we will have a challenge,” Mr Harjohn said.
Over the past years, the GPL has had many criticisms over its generation capacity but as the Christmas season approaches more power will be needed given the need for more lights and appliances to be powered.
GPL with a US$38 million spending on the fuel supply, Guyana should be ably powered.
However, due to the inconsistency of the system and the fact that more and more GPL is faced with even consumers hitting the poles and damaging several infraction grids which are key to several interconnections around the country there is a problem.
To accommodate the outage in the past, the GPL would have countered with more standby generation but this season no such standby.
“There wouldn’t be any use of the emergency generation equipment this year. We have enough reserve capacity and this is including baseload capacity,” Central Executive Officer, Bharat Dindyal said.
He noted also that in such a situation, there is only so much GPL can do to prevent any outage but it has to be ready.
GPL explained with the need to attend to the situation in a fast manner, response staff will be doubled at the various stations to ensure that that power stays off for a short time.
