More energy will not stop blackouts; redundancy will – GPL Head

…as Govt seeks additional power generation ahead of GtE start-up

Though the Gas-to-Energy (GtE) Project is expected to add some 57 megawatts (MW) of power to the grid by year-end, the Government is seeking additional generation in the interim to meet growing demand. This is according to Team Leader of the Executive Management Committee of the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) Kesh Nandlall, during an interview on the Starting Point podcast on Sunday. The GtE Project is set to come onstream by the end of this year, delivering some 57 MW of electricity while the remaining power will be delivered by the first half of 2027. But Nandlall said due to the growing demand and pressures on the grid, the Government is seeking additional power generation immediately. “We are currently looking at additional generation immediate, immediate…we are considering smaller units to plug in at the ends. And we are also considering a bigger solution. We have a number of options,” the GPL Head said. Nandlall did not disclose what are the options being pursued or how many MW of power is being sought. In an invited comment to this publication, he said whatever route is chosen must be capable of delivering power immediately. Peak demand currently stands at 255 MW, with a customer base of approximately 250,000. GPL’s generating capacity is about 270 MW.
The interim power being sought is expected to play a significant role in meeting increased demand during the upcoming Christmas period. Another reason for the need for interim generation is to meet demand when existing generating sets are taken offline for maintenance.

Nandlall explained that an engine requires maintenance after 12,000 hours. “And as you work them, they have to be taken down. If you do not, then they will trip and they can die…in the interim, we will normally, if we want to keep them ongoing, we will monitor them carefully. We will do additional maintenance to keep them going. But we cannot keep them going too long. So, we do have to take down engines intermittently. And perhaps for the next every month for the next year,” he highlighted.
“And that is exactly the reason why, more so, that we have to seek additional interim generating capacity until we have the gas to energy,” he added.

Redundancy
The full 300 MW of power from the GtE Project should be available by June 2027.
But even when this additional generation comes onstream, Nandlall emphasised that true stability in the power supply will depend on building a more robust and redundant system. Some US$800 million is currently being invested to do so, through the construction of new substations, transmission lines and more than 200 kilometres (km) of distribution feeders. Nandlall explained that until the system achieves full redundancy, which is expected by 2030, power interruptions may still occur. In this regard, he noted even with GtE, that blackouts can still occur “if somebody hit a pole, if we have to do maintenance work…because we don’t truly have a redundant system as yet. That is further plan, a 2030 plan, to really truly have a redundant smart system. So, you’re still going to have minimal interruptions, because you will have to do maintenance. You might have to take off a piece of a network to do actual emergency maintenance. You will have incidences against the network that we are currently faced with also. So, you will still have some amount of interruption, but not to this extent,” Nandlall outlined. And while investments are being made, he stressed that it takes time. “Investment in the power sector takes time. We cannot build transmission lines overnight,” Nandlall remarked.

Control Centre’s role
Meanwhile, he noted that the US$20 million National Control Centre at Goedverwagting will play a significant role in alleviating blackouts in the future.
“That National Control Center will carry with it modern SCAD equipment, where once a system is set up, we’ll be able to monitor the grid from the generation to each substation, through the transmission lines to each substation, to each distribution feeders, to the transformers, to the customer meters. And we can see that power flow. And when an incident occurs, we will be able to identify that incident. Everything will be smart. They will have communication equipment in place at every single point of the grid. And you can actually, either the grid can be self-healing, or you can actually, with redundancy in the grid, reroute the power so that customers are not affected,” Nandlall noted. “Meters will be smart, so that you can see what you’re consuming on a daily basis. You’ll have an app, and you can see your manager consumption on a minute to minute, on a real-time basis. That’s what really a smart grid is. And in doing so, we are building out redundancy,” he added. Other works being executed under the US$800 million investment is seeking to incorporate redundancy in the system.
“All our transmission lines, the 230 kilovolts (kV) transmission lines that we’re building out now from Goedverwagting to East Berbice are both double circuits. So, if something goes wrong with one circuit, we can fall back on the other circuit. All our 69 kilovolt lines that we’re building out are double circuits. So, we’re building that redundancy within the system to ensure that when we invest all of this, all these monies into our capital programme, that we get a proper infrastructure that provides reliable, resilient and cost-effective electricity to our consumers,” Nandlall explained.

New system
According to reports, power from the GtE plant will be transmitted to the new Goedverwagting substation at 230 kV, before being reduced to lower voltage levels for distribution across the network. That substation will also interconnect with GPL’s existing Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS), including the Sophia substation. The new facility has been designed with additional capacity to cater for future electricity demand. A new 69 kV transmission line will connect Goedverwagting to the Columbia substation, replacing existing infrastructure along the railway embankment. Monopoles for sections of that transmission network have already been constructed. A 230 kV transmission network will also extend east to Williamsburg, where another substation will reduce the voltage to 69 kV. That network will interconnect with the Onverwagt and Number 53 Village substations, while GPL said power can also be transmitted farther east to the Skeldon substation. Works are also ongoing on new substations across the country including at Chateau Margot, Enmore, Parika, and Kuru Kururu. Nandlall informed the podcast on Sunday that, “all these substations, they’re also going to have feeders coming out of them, which we call medium voltage, which will then provide electricity and offload some of these circuits that we have pressures on right now.” “So, for example, in Goedverwagting, we will have a number of feeders coming out of there, that will help to offload around Georgetown, around the East Bank. In addition to that, we have a substation, we are upgrading the Good Hope substation, we are upgrading substations at Kingston, at Vreed-en-Hoop, and we are building new substations right around Georgetown. We’re building one in Kuru Kururu, so that we can power the East Bank. We are building one in Princes Street, we are upgrading the new Georgetown substation, we are building a new substation at Parika, so that we can we can expand there as well. And all this carry feeders that’s coming out, about 200 kilometres of distribution feeders, which will offload all these feeders and provide additional capacity to the system,” he said.

Demerara River
Meanwhile, another part of the plan is to install another cable from the Princes Street substation in Georgetown, running along the floor of the Demerara River, to the Vreed en Hoop substation. “We are now going 75 feet below the seabed and putting in, we call it HDD [Horizontal Directional Drilling], you’re putting in a double circuit cable that will connect the Kingston to the Vreed-en-Hoop substation, that will now create redundancy. So, the gas to energy can come through, some of the power can come through Vreed-en-Hoop, go to Kingston and come and into Sophia, and some of the power can come at around Garden of Eden, to Goedverwagting, and we create a redundancy there. So that’s the kind of redundancy we’re building,” Nandlall explained.