President registers ‘dissatisfaction’ with GPL’s performance during meeting with management

President Dr. Irfaan Ali on Tuesday met with the Board of Directors and management of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) – Guyana’s main electricity generating company – where he expressed dissatisfaction with the entity’s performance.

A release from the President’s office noted that Dr. Ali also engaged Power Producers and Distributors Incorporated (PPDI) and Wärtsilä, the two companies that work alongside GPL to supply power through Guyana’s main power grid, the Demerara Berbice Interconnected System.

According to the release, the President “expressed his dissatisfaction with the entity’s performance” even as he acknowledged the challenges the company grapples with stemming from the lack of maintenance and investments during the period 2015 to 2020.

It was also noted that the exponential growth in demand for electricity locally, aged infrastructure and assets and the lack of redundancy in transmission were also discussed during the meeting.

The President will, later Tuesday, engage GPL again. The government is already engaging the United Kingdom Export Finance (UKEF) body for financing to pursue transmission solutions.

And the President asked the company to explore alternative power supply options. Any alternatives, it was explained, would be to provide bridge electricity until the flagship gas-to-energy project at Wales is operational. That project promises to increase local power supply by about 300 megawatts, a sum far greater than what GPL currently supplies.

Just as the meeting concluded, however, GPL reported another power failure. Earlier Tuesday, the company said customers in sections of Demerara were experiencing service interruptions because of “technical faults in two of the engines at the Kingston facility.”

There has been a need to invest in new generators locally as the power demand grows.

At the end of 2023, GPL acquired additional generating sets to guarantee that there would be enough power supply locally. The situation remained volatile, however. There were numerous power outages throughout March, prompting much public outrage. Last week, system failures at Kingston, Georgetown and Garden of Eden, East Bank Demerara, locations last week caused countrywide power outages.

President Ali on Monday told the News Room that widespread construction and the ongoing hot conditions have driven up power demand and GPL was forced to supply additional power. So he reasoned that there must be increased spending on additional generating capacity.

He, however, said then that he planned to be stern with the management of GPL during his Tuesday meeting.