GPL says it delivered “commendable” service during the holidays

The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Inc believes it delivered “commendable” service during the holidays.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the Power Company said this was the result of staff working tirelessly to ensure consumers experience little to minimum interruptions.
“For the second consecutive year, the Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) has successfully maintained a stable supply of electricity during the Christmas season,” GPL said in the statement.
Between December 18 and December 31, 2019, the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) had a total of 144.7 megawatts available generation capacity, while the Power Plants at Anna Regina, Bartica, Leguan, and Wakenaam had a total of 17.18 megawatts collectively.

GPL said these megawatts were available owing to its efforts to efficiently service aged generation plants, some of which are semi-retired.
Unfortunately, accidents during the holiday season resulted in damage to some of GPL’s poles.
Those accidents coupled with a few transformer failures resulted in minor service disruptions in some communities.
“Amidst this setback, GPL field staff swiftly expedited work to restore electricity,” the company explained.
In fact, GPL revealed that an unprecedented five shutdowns were experienced in the year 2019, whereas there was a total of 12 shutdowns in 2018, and 25 in 2017.
“The aim is to completely eliminate these events, even though this will be a challenge until existing generation, transmission, and distribution (T&D) systems are upgraded,” GPL outlined.
It posited that the improvement in performance has resulted in customers in Demerara, Berbice, Anna Regina, Bartica, Leguan and Wakenaam only experiencing minimal service interruptions, which were largely attributed to localised faults.
Despite being plagued with an aged T&D network, the public utility company says it is diligently conducting planned maintenance activities on the network while having an increased number of emergency response crews on standby to address localised faults.
GPL said these planned maintenance activities were being executed by its workers across the country, who “worked the miles putting in extra hours, beyond their normal working time”, to complete the tasks.

Moving forward, the power company said it intended to continue to ensure there was sufficient and available capacity to meet demand while improving the quality of supply to all customers.
In the statement, GPL Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Albert Gordon explained that planned maintenance for the upkeep of units as well as other operational works would continue for the new year as the company continued its journey towards becoming a world-class utility.
He added that GPL was also pursuing a number of developmental and expansion plans, which once implemented, would see the systems operating throughout the year with little chance of service interruptions.