GPL says working to fix power problems as more blackouts loom

Chairman of the Guyana Power and Light company (GPL) Rawle Lucas Friday morning said the company is not proud of its performance but is working to rectify the problems which have spelled incessant blackouts for thousands of customers across the country.

In an embarrassing Freudian slip, Mr Lucas referred to the company as GPHell – the name many on social media have used to describe the company in times of blackout.

He was speaking at a stakeholder forum GPL called at the Herdmanston Lodge in Queenstown, Georgetown, to inform of the company’s state of generation and its plans to end blackouts.

Mr Lucas reported that from June 1 to August 1 this year, there have been 772 blackouts for those who are connected to the Demerara and Berbice Interconnected System, which serves customers from West Coast Demerara to Moleson Creek on the Corentyne Coast; the system also serves customers south to Kururu on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway and to Timehri, East Bank Demerara.

For those 92 days, blackouts averaged eight per day. The data reveals customers from Charlestown to Timehri suffered the most, experiencing 32 per cent of the outages.

This was followed by customers on the East Coast getting 23% of the outages; West Demerara customers experienced 21 per cent. Lucas said customers in Berbice experienced 17% of the blackouts.

GPL last week reported that it had lost 23 megawatts of power due to various issues and while most of that will return over the weekend, the need for scheduled maintenance will result in continued unavailability of 18 megawatts of power.