Engine failures responsible for recent power outages – Indar

Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar on Tuesday said three main issues, including the failure of engines at the Guyana Power and Light, were responsible for the power outages experienced across the country in recent weeks.

In an invited comment, Indar told the News Room that two engines failed while a turbocharger failure on a 9.3-megawatt engine further exacerbated power supply setbacks.

“What has happened in the last two weeks with GPL is that they had three problems, two of the Power Producer and Distribution Inc. (PPDI)… two of their engines failed totaling 13 megawatts,” Indar told the News Room at the sidelines of an event at the Office of the Prime Minister in Georgetown.

He explained that these two engines are aged and said while this is not an excuse for the power outages, it provides an explanation.

“One of them failed because it had some issue with a bearing and the other failed because they had something with a pin on the engine head,” he explained.

In addition to these failures, the 46.5-megawatt power plant at Garden of Eden, East Bank Demerara, had an issue with a turbocharger manufactured by Napier.

“The Wärtsilä engines that we had previously had what we call ABB chargers… the ABB chargers have twice the economic life of these Napier chargers that are currently installed at the 46.5 megawatts plant so they run half the life of ABB chargers, and one of those turbochargers went down on one of those engines which is a 9.3 megawatts engine,” Indar explained.

Together with these engine failures, about 23 megawatts of power were lost.
Indar said the turbocharger was replaced last Thursday.

As it relates to the other two engines, Indar assured that one will be back in operation in about two weeks while the bearing for the other is being manufactured. The manufacturer told GPL that it would take 6-8 weeks; that was three weeks ago.

“We have about 4-5 weeks before the other engine come up back because of the bearing that they have to manufactured,” Indar said.
Meanwhile, Indar further explained that despite the acquisition of new generators by GPL in December 2023, power outages are still being experienced because the new generators that will supply 28.9 megawatts of power are not fully operational at the Colombia, Mahaicony sub-station.

“The 28.9 megawatts came in December and we immediately started to install [however,] we did not get that power in till sometime in January. Only about five engines were installed to hook up to the grid, nevertheless, during the period of Christmas and January, there were no outages,” he said.

Currently, 14 out of the 17 engines are operational, with plans to connect more as needed to alleviate power supply challenges. The remaining engines are expected to be operational in the coming weeks, contributing to increased grid stability.

“So far, that project is not completely installed because they had some fuel tanks that had to come in because of some issues, nevertheless the contractor has asked GPL for two two-month extension which was supposed to be in February but they now have April,” Indar explained.