Over 60 MW of reserve power now in electrical grid – Jagdeo on power outage relief

…says GPL leverages redundancy to do much needed equipment maintenance

With over 60 Megawatts (MW) of reserve power in the Demerara Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS), the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) is making hay while the sun shines, using this redundancy as a reprieve to do much needed maintenance on its generating sets without causing excessive blackouts.
This is according to Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, who explained during a press conference on Friday that with the addition of the second power ship to the grid, they now have over 200 MW of installed capacity in the system and 67 MW of reserve power.
“We have made significant investments. We’re adding maybe 100 MW of installed capacity. Through fossil fuel and solar. And now, we have purchased and have installed nearly 100 MW, through the power ships. So maybe 200 MW of capacity we’re adding to the system,” Jagdeo explained.
“The transmission mains are still old, but now, given what happened the last week where the power ship sailed into the Demerara River and was connected to the grid a few nights ago. And that has allowed us, we have 200 MW of power installed. With the demand in October was about 205 MW, peak demand. It is now about 200 MW. So, we have about 67 MW of reserve, for the first time in a while.”
As such, Jagdeo explained that GPL can use part of its reserves to carry out much needed maintenance on various generator sets, without having to compromise on power. According to the Vice President, these are transitional measures until the Gas-to-Energy (GtE) Project is up and running.
“We’re expecting, as the president said, better levels of performance now that they have the adequate amount of power to meet the demand. In fact, they have way beyond what the peak demand is,” Jagdeo explained.
“So, I’m glad this has happened in the past weeks. And we don’t expect to have blackouts the way we had. Because of shortage of power, there may be blackouts associated with faults in the transmission system from time to time. A pole falls or anything of that sort. But it should not originate from the lack of power.”

The arrival of the second power ship came after a contract signing last month between GPL and the Joint Venture of Turkish-based Karpowership Global DMCC and Qatar-based UCC Energy International LLC JV, to charter a second power ship with a total installed capacity of 75 MW for two years.
In the first phase, the power ship will dispatch 60 MW to the grid in approximately six weeks followed by an additional 15 MW, once works are completed on an additional transmission line. The contract requires GPL to pay the Joint Venture 8.52 US cents per Kilowatt-hour (kWh) as a monthly charter fee for the new power ship.
It also requires a monthly operation and maintenance fee of 0.98 US cents per kWh, based on electricity generated. Under the contract, GPL is also responsible for providing Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) for the operation of the ship’s generators.
The addition of the second power ship will boost GPL’s generation capacity to 207 MW, ensuring reliable electricity during the holiday season and beyond. The first power ship had been deployed to Guyana in May of this year and is currently stationed at Everton in the Berbice River.
The floating power plant has been supplying 36 MW of electricity to the DBIS. As part of that agreement, GPL had paid a US$1 million mobilisation fee, a fee of 6.62 US cents per kWh as a monthly charter fee for the vessel, and a monthly operation and maintenance fee of 0.98 US cents per kWh based on electricity generated. (G3)