GPL monitoring Vreed-en-Hoop plant after emergency shutdown

The Guyana Power and Light is assessing its Vreed-en-Hoop power plant, West Coast Demerara, after it was taken offline following a generator complication on Saturday evening.
Detailing the incidents which unfolded, the utility company noted that at about 22:45h, one of its larger generating units (8.7 Megawatts) developed a lube oil leak on a turbocharger and had to be taken offline on an emergency basis. This is since there was a high risk of a fire.
An initial analysis suggested the rapid off-loading of the 8.7MW unit resulted in a significant frequency decline. Despite the intervention of other generators and under-frequency load-shedding scheme, the system collapsed.
“Remedial efforts to restore power commenced immediately. At approximately 22:50h the first circuit in Georgetown was repowered, with incremental restoration continuing in Georgetown and lower East Coast. All areas were repowered at approximately 00:33h,” GPL stated.
On Sunday, data gathering and analysis continued to identify the sequence of events as captured by the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.
“Despite these challenges, our company remains committed to improving the reliability of service to our customers,” the statement ended. The shutdown had severely affected the Demerara-Berbice interconnecting circuits thus leaving half of the country in complete darkness for almost two hours.
This did not go down well with the citizens who took to social media to vent their frustration. In most cases the Government was blamed from not putting the necessary infrastructure in place to alleviate the power woes that the country has been experience over the past months.

In addition, persons vented their concerns about security when there is a national shutdown. In fact, <<<Guyana Times>>> understands that several persons were robbed at a wedding in Kitty, Georgetown, by person who went to the bar under the pretext of purchasing alcohol. The Police have not released any information with respect to the robbery.
However, with the aim of putting an end to the frequent power failures, the Government is constructing a US$50 million power plant at Garden of Eden on the East Bank of Demerara, which will house the five Wartsila generators to add some 46.5MW power to the grid.
Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips had recently explained that GPL’s main issue is not power generation but the transmission and distribution system, which is undergoing daily repairs.
“We have an old transmission and distribution system that is challenging… So, even if you have enough or adequate power to supply the whole Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS), from time to time people suffer outages and many of those outages are linked towards the repairs being done to the aged distribution system,” he was quoted as saying on a televised programme.
Nevertheless, with this 46MW capacity added to the system, some of these woes will be alleviated. In presenting the 2021 national budget, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh had disclosed that electricity supply is estimated to have grown in 2020 by 1.2 per cent. With this figure slated to further increase this year, Government is pushing to expand its energy supply to Guyanese across the country with more reliable electricity at an affordable cost.
To this end, Government is embarking on piping gas to shore to meet the growing demand for electricity. Conceptualised as a 210-kilometre pipeline to transport natural gas from offshore Guyana, the gas-to-power project will be the trailblazer to advance Guyana’s path to domestic energy security within the next three years.
The plan is to have the pipeline land at the former Wales Sugar Estate which will now be transformed into the Wales Development Authority (WDA).
On the sustainable side, the PPP/C Administration is also looking at building an energy mix and as such, will be reactivating efforts to bring the Amaila Falls Hydro Project (AFHP) into reality.
In fact, PM Phillips explained that his Government wants to have at least 400MW of power available in Guyana through natural gas, hydro, solar and wind between now and 2025.