Works have commenced at the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) sub-station at Colombia, Mahaicony, East Coast to install the new generators and transformers which arrived in the country last week and the engines are expected to be connected to the grid before the end of this week.
This is according to Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar who told the News Room on Monday that seven of the seventeen engines which were procured were already transported to the site.
“As of this morning (Monday), we had about six or seven of them on the plank. They are hooking up the fuel system and the generators to a switch gear and the transformers so that it can be plugged into the substation,” Indar told the News Room.
According to Indar, preparatory works to ensure the physical infrastructure was in place to fit the generators were done ahead of the arrival of the engines last week.
“Those works were being done concurrently to the shipment so when it come we had the physical infrastructure to put it in,” Indar said.
The works are being done in phases.
“We’re supposed to get power there sometime in this week here,” Indar said.
Seventy-six containers of generators and transformers along with radiators, fuel and oil separators were shipped to Guyana in the MV Skystar.
The vessel arrived at the Muneshwers Wharf, Kingston, and Georgetown last Wednesday.
They were immediately offloaded and transported to the Colombia, Mahaicony, sub-station for installation.
The US$27M equipment from Apan Energy was initially slated to arrive in Guyana on November 22.
Indar told the News Room recently that the equipment were shipped separately to Guyana from different territories. However, he said there were some “slight” delays with the shipment as it relates to passage via the Panama Canal, resulting in the delay.
The country’s power company was forced to implement a load-shedding schedule across the country as it did not have the capacity to feed the increase in demand for electricity.
At present, GPL has the capacity to generate 167 megawatts. The demand at the beginning of November was 172 megawatts.
Once installed, the new generators would add 28.9 megawatts to the national grid.
And He said: Let There Be Light and with a flipping finger- THERE WAS LIGHT.