The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) does not have the capacity to feed the increase in demand for power across the country and the company has been forced to put a load shedding schedule in place.
And as the company works towards addressing the issue, Minister within the Ministry of Public Works Deodat Indar on Thursday said a number of private sector companies that have the capacity to produce their own electricity were removed from the grid.
On Friday, a management team from GPL is expected to meet with officials from the Giftland Mall to discuss purchasing electricity.
“They said they have some generating capacity that they can add to the grid,” Indar told a press conference on Thursday.
Upon assuming office in 2020, the PPP/C government had an arrangement with Giftland Mall for them to produce electricity to the national grid.
But that stopped after Giftland experienced some issues.
“I think now they say they can and we are engaging them,” Indar said.
Additionally, Indar noted that GPL has purchased a number of generators and transformers to a tune of US$27M from Apan Energy. When commissioned, he said this will add 28.9 megawatts to their capacity.
“We are at a point where we awarded 28.9 megawatts and that is from a company called Apan Energy. They have indicated to us that the engines that we bought are already service and prepared, they are already shipped to the port…The expected arrival date in Guyana is around the 22 November. They have also said to me that there are some transformers,” Indar explained.
According to Indar, once the new equipment is set up and commissioned, load shedding is expected to drastically reduce by mid-December.
“We are targeting the 15 of December. So between now and the 15 of December is when this spate of low shedding will have to be managed,” he said.
At present, GPL has the capacity to generate 167 megawatts. The demand over the past week has been 172 megawatts.
“GPL has right now a number of generating sets, that total, in terms of reliable operating sets about 167 megawatts. Right now, the country over the last week, we have seen the peak demand. About 172 megawatts so because of that short fall, we see some blackouts.
“The generators just have the generating capacity to feed of the demand and we know where this demand is coming from,” Indar said.
While GPL has subsidized over US$100M, Indar noted that there was no increase in prices for electricity for customers.
“We have not raised the price on anyone…They had to sacrifice to some extent some of the things that they wanted to do, just to make sure they didn’t raise the price on customers,” Indar said.
