Proposals made for additional generators at Bartica’s Power Plant

…as power demand grows

As the century old town of Bartica in Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) continues to witness significant growth in key sectors such as housing and mining among others, the town’s energy consumption has jumped significantly over the years.
In an interview with Guyana Times the town’s mayor, Anthony Murray revealed that in a bid to keep up with the town’s growing energy appetite proposals were made to central government under the town’s capital projects to acquire additional generators which will be installed at the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) powerplant in Bartica.

“It was talked about around coming from Central, but it would be a capital project… hopefully, they get to put it into the budget so that they could have the process move forward in purchasing either the two-engine or one-engine that would have the capacity to work along with the others,” The mayor said.
The Bartica Power Plant stationed at Dogg Point, Agatash was commissioned in December of 2019 and has the capacity to generate 3.3 megawatts of power. The 5-year-old power plant was at the time outfitted with three power generation units one of which was initially intended to be used as a backup generator. However, Guyana Times understands that this backup unit is currently being used to meet the town’s growing energy demand.

Power vulnerability
Residents of Bartica, last August were left without electricity for approximately eight hours following the shutdown of two of the three Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Bartica power plant generators.
The unavailability of the three critical units significantly reduced the plant’s power producing capabilities, which resulted in a ripple effect leaving communities across Bartica without electricity.
In an invited comment at that time the mayor had revealed that power outages are not a common occurrence in the town. He highlighted that one of the backup generators at the plant was inoperable prior to the power outage, which would have contributed to the disruption of power.
With the backup generator now being used to feed the town’s energy appetite persons have expressed concerns noting that in a worst-case scenario the situation could repeat itself.
Booming economic growth
The town is currently witnessing significant infrastructural growth in its mining and housing sectors.
Under its flagship ‘Dream Realised’ initiative, the Housing and Water Ministry has been working to develop new housing schemes in the town. In fact, In Bartica alone, there were three new housing areas established with some 132-house distributed to date. Notably, just last Friday the Housing and Water Ministry had allocated some 500 house lots to residents in Bartica and surrounding areas in Region Seven.
Moreover, one of the of the largest gold mines is in that region and located in the Oko West area. The new US$1.5 billion gold project has a projected mine life of 13 years, and is expected to re-energize Guyana’s mining sector with the production of 350,000 ounces of gold annually. The project, which would come on stream in 2027, is situated some 95 kilometres southwest of Georgetown and measures approximately 44 square kilometres.