Home Top Stories GPL to institute penalties as 99% of shutdowns caused by accidents, construction
… “atrocious” – Jagdeo on constant power outages
In 99 per cent of cases where the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) has experienced a total shutdown for 2023, it was as a result of human interference with the transmission lines.
At a press conference on Thursday to shed light on the recent spell of power outages, GPL Director of Power Generation and Delivery, Bharat Harjohn told media operatives that there have been countless instances of such.
Most cases include damage to the network as a result of vehicular accidents. In other cases where a construction zone is nearby, Harjohn elaborated that simply disrupting a certain area around the line can send a trigger to the protection system in place, causing a shutdown.
Consequently, the power company has taken a decision to institute penalties for these actions.
“Of recent, we started to implement penalties…These are things that we will be taking a no-nonsense approach…For the year so far, we had 99 per cent of the cases of total shutdowns as a result of people or vehicles coming in contact with the network,” Harjohn relayed.
Tremendous damage
Recently, an excavator came into contact with a high voltage wire in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), and the 13,000 volts fed back into the Kingston plant.
Minister within the Public Works Ministry, Deodat Indar added that this caused tremendous damage to three engines.
“One excavator swing and hit the high voltage wire. When you have that high voltage going through, it feeds back into the substation and the substation shuts down to protect itself, but the cylinders on the engines were damaged. That’s two engines at 5.5 megawatts…You know how many thousands of customers had to be out of power because of that incident?” Indar questioned during the presser.
In another instance, an incident involved someone cutting bamboo trees at Friendship on the East Bank of Demerara, which later came into contact with the 69,000-volt transmission lines. This also fed back into the Garden of Eden power plant, also causing damage to the engines.
“It’s high voltage. We have to now bring up back these engines and change out parts. While that is happening, thousands of customers are out of power. That’s insult to injury,” the Minister stressed.
Tough action
Meanwhile, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has lashed out at the dismal performance of GPL Inc in light of the increasing spate of power outages across the country on a daily basis. He signalled tougher action on the part of Government in ensuring the utility company functions smoothly.
During his press conference on Thursday, Jagdeo said Government is concerned about the situation, which he described as atrocious. In the same breath, however, he explained the current Administration has had to deal with the lack of investments by the former Government to upgrade the country’s generation systems coupled with increased demand.
“It does affect our people and the President has made it clear to GPL because we believe that some of it is not just because of the availability of the generating sets, but also because of some negligence. We have to take tough action,” Jagdeo contended.
On this note, the Vice President said that Government was working on a medium-term fix that would see electricity cost lowered and power regularised in the coming years through the 300-megawatt power plant to be constructed as part of the gas-to-energy project.
“We’re trying to fix it in the medium term definitively with lower power, but we have to struggle to where we’re struggling through. That is largely because of APNU [the A Partnership for National Unity]. That is not an excuse. That is the reality and analysis.” (G12)