Gov’t in talks with Turkish company to buy ‘emergency power’ – Jagdeo

As Guyanese continue to grapple with power outages, Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo said Thursday that the government is currently in talks with a company to purchase “emergency power” that will help meet the growing demand.

The Vice President is part of a government team assembled by President Dr. Irfaan Ali to monitor the situation and work on a proposal for the purchase of additional power.

“Hopefully before the end of this week, we can conclude this contract and have this vessel arrive in the country maybe in two or three weeks later that will see a significant injection of power into the grid in addition to what we already have.

“We intend to contract this for two years until the gas to energy project is completed,” Jagdeo said.

Jagdeo later revealed that the power is being procured from a Turkish company, Karpowership. About 36 megawatts (MW) of power is being sought and the government is likely to pay about eight cents per kilowatt hour though Guyana is tasked with supplying the fuel.

This new arrangement involves getting the power from a ship. The vessel will be taken to Everton, Berbice, and connected to GPL’s grid so power can be supplied to consumers.

The Vice President, however, noted that the negotiations with the company aren’t concluded as yet. Those should be concluded by Friday.

As was the case last week when he addressed a People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) press conference, the Vice President was apologetic about the situation citizens face with outages from the Guyana Power and Light (GPL).

He said the situation has been giving the government “headaches.”

GPL is Guyana’s main power supply company. It manages the country’s main power grid – the Demerara- Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS). The State-owned electricity company generates power from diesel engines, most of them old and need replacing.

Jagdeo reiterated that the government is working towards solving power generation woes not only through fixing and upgrading GPL generating sets but also by investing in hydropower and natural gas.

In the short term, emergency power is being sought to bring immediate relief.

And the Vice President added, “We’re hoping that within a matter of weeks, we will be able to bring the situation back to normalcy and then have extra capacity to address any failure of equipment like what we experienced recently.”