Power ship to reduce electricity woes, but isolated instances of blackouts may still occur – Jagdeo

The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) on Thursday stated that it has completed testing the engines, transformers, fuel, metering and telecommunication systems on the power ship to begin generating electricity to add to the grid.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, during his press conference, noted that the Government hoped that this connection would be able to stop the frequent blackouts experienced by Guyanese in recent months as a result of low generating capacity.
“We’re hoping that with the 36 megawatts now added to the system, that we’ll have enough power in the system to end the current spate of blackout which comes from the unavailability of power.
“There may be isolated instances, because of the poor transmission and distribution system,” he added.
Jagdeo said the Government was still looking to get an additional 30 megawatts of power through a similar arrangement until the much-anticipated Gas-to-Energy Project comes on stream
The power ship was chartered from Urbacon Concessions Investments, W.L.L (UCI), a subsidiary of UCC Holdings, a company incorporated in the State of Qatar.
However, GPL earlier in the day stated that its engineers are currently finalising testing of the protection relay devices to ensure there was communication between the ship and its Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. The SCADA system will monitor and control the power distribution network to ensure efficiency and system reliability.
“Once completed today (Thursday), the team will commence dispatching power from the power ship to the grid. The power will be injected into the DBIS [Demerara Berbice Interconnected System] incrementally, beginning with Berbice and continuing through the various load centres in Demerara,” the company said.
GPL has to pay a fee of 6.62 US cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) as a monthly charter fee for the power ship and a monthly operation and maintenance fee of 0.98 US cents per kWh based on electricity generated. GPL is also required to provide Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) for the operation of the generators onboard the vessel.