The recent bouts of power outages over the last two days, which affected four regions in the country, were as a result of two mega voltage cables coming into contact.
Following Sunday evening’s power outage from Moleson Creek, Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) all the way to Parika, Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), and including Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) , the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Inc was able to restore power nearly three hours later. According
The cables at Vlissengen Road and Lamaha Street intersection which came into contact resulting in Sunday night’s power shutdown
to acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the power company, Renford Homer, this process usually takes about an hour, but some challenges were encountered, thus causing the delay in power restoration that night.
However, the acting CEO posited that while power was restored that evening, at the time technicians were unaware of the cause of the outage. This resulted in a combing exercise on Monday morning, to ascertain the source of the previous night’s power shutdown. During this exercise, however, another power outage was experienced, during which the power cables crossover was detected at feeders located north-east of the Vlissengen Road and Lamaha Street intersection. “We had a situation where cables with two extreme voltages were basically coming into contact. So one cable with 13,800 volts was coming into contact with a cable – a 69,000 volts,” he explained, adding that this caused a fiery explosion that “literally disturbed the entire (distribution) network”.
The 69,000 volt conductor is the main transmission line that links Sophia to Kingston while the 13,800 volt conductor takes power from the Kingston facility to parts of Queenstown, Subyranville, Kitty, Prashad Nagar and so on.
Homer noted that immediate efforts to correct this situation saw the de-energising of not only the transmission line (F line) but also the submarine cable linking Vreed-en-Hoop to Kingston.
“So we were able to get the corrective work done, which took about two to two and a half hours, and then we basically re-energised the transmission lines and slowly bring the system back into a steady state,” he noted.
Furthermore, Homer pointed out that the after-effect of these two high-voltage cables coming into contact was felt on Tuesday morning.
“A disturbance of that nature can have a ripple effect, particularly the F line suffered quite a great shock and so on Tuesday morning there was another disturbance… (Tuesday) morning, we found that the F line had become entangled with another feeder and this was as a result of a short-circuit situation…which we believed would have been an after-effect of what took place on Sunday,” he stated.
Asked what could have caused the overlapping of the two cables that led to Sunday night’s power shutdown, the acting GPL CEO asserted that there were two contributory factors. Firstly, he explained that because the utility poles made out of wood and is fixed into the ground, if there is any movement, this could result in a shift of the cables.
“Now, we haven’t established clearly that this is what it was, or whether it was work that was done sometime before that probably may not have been done to standards,” he stated.
Nevertheless, Homer told this newspaper that what needed to be done going forward was a programme of remedial works not only at the Vlissengen Road intersection, but along the various corridors where there were these crossover scenarios in order to ensure that there was adequate spacing in accordance to the technical standards between conductors.
Nevertheless, the GPL official posited that with the comprehensive check and remedial work done, there should be no similar disturbances, at least not any relating to the this particular issue.
“Having recognised and identified where that problem was and corrected it, as it is now it would probably require a major disturbance on the structure for there to be another contact between the cables. We are pretty confident that the work we have done will not at this instance or even going into the future allow for that,” he reaffirmed.
Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson explained to reporters at the briefing on Tuesday, that Sunday’s power outage was “catastrophic” to the distribution network.
To this end, Minister Patterson pointed out that steps were being put in place to have an alternative power network for situations such as Sunday night’s. In fact, he noted that tenders were recently opened for this alternative line.
“It is envisaged that we have a ring, so in the future if this transmission line (at Vlissengen Road) goes down, we can divert and have power go to the Sophia Station via another route,” he stated.
Moreover, Patterson noted that GPL would also be investing some US$31 million in expanding and upgrading its power distribution network.
In the meantime, while he believes the corrective works done would prevent a reoccurrence of what transpired over the last two days, the Public Infrastructure Minister opined that emphasis needed to be placed on the sensitive nature of these power poles. To this end, he urged motorists to be cautious on the roadways.
