Guyana’s energy future will require a more resilient, efficient, electric grid

Dear Editor,
Renewable energy is increasingly affordable, good for the environment, and is here to stay. The problem is that Guyana’s electrical grid isn’t ready for it. The grid was not built for the kind of fluctuating supply that comes from distributed energy generation.
In addition to the increased supply volatility associated with distributed energy resources, our power companies will be confronted with increased demands on the grid from electrification and digitisation of the economy.
Our customer expectations for consumer-grade digital experiences and increased emphasis on safety and reliability would only increase.
Our nation must understand that this is a work in progress. Guyana’s aging grids are not prepared to accommodate the complexity of bidirectional intermittent power flows from distributed energy resources. Integrating more and more distributed energy resources connected to the grid would create congestion and an unpredictable strain on the network, since it was built for one extreme. Too much electricity demand, or too much electricity generation, can cause disruptions at the circuit, substation and system levels. Guyana’s traditional grid reinforcement techniques would not be able keep pace with those strains. They can damage circuit segment cables, fuses and transformers, and cause voltage variability and outages across the distribution network.
Modernising the grid in Guyana to accommodate renewable energy will improve system reliability and outage restoration, while supporting increased levels of distributed energy resources.
It’s important to get in front of potential congestion issues now, in order to avoid safety and reliability issues down the line. Much of Guyana’s grid is horribly outdated, some of it is more than 50 years old. That itself is already causing problems, and more are on the way. Reverse power flows from distributed energy resources and increasing consumer demand from electric data centres would change the electricity load profile in the future.
As it is right now, our national utility grid lacks the capability to accommodate highly variable two-way power flows from renewable energy sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines. This makes it difficult to use distributed energy resources, such as home solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles, to their full potential. Our distribution systems were built for power flowing in one direction — from the power plant to the customer. In the future, power will be flowing both ways, as homeowners and private solar and wind farm can sell their extra power back to the grid.

Updating the planning
Process, it’s not just the utility infrastructure that’s aging, the planning capabilities and communication technology are outdated as well. Going forward, our utilities companies would have to transform the planning process to consider how distributed energy resources can expand, while keeping the system reliable. Currently, system modeling tools are not integrated, and rely on assumptions and time-consuming manual assessments of circuit capacity.
Comprehensive grid planning would increase reliability for customers and also allow for continued seamless integration of renewable energy resources, such as wind, solar, and storage.
However, it is also time to start looking at use of transmission line poles of centrifuged or prestressed concrete, a majority of our sub transmission network (40KV to 150kv) in service must be constructed with this type of support, which must also be done for the high-level transmission network 220/440KV or lower levels (medium voltage electricity distribution), as Guyana’s energy future would require a more resilient, efficient electric grid that adapts to distributed sources of power generation.

Sincerely,
David Adams