‘Great progress!’ – GPL to begin receiving electricity from power ship later today

The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) in an update on Thursday said testing of engines, fuels and metering have been completed in efforts to successfully connect the Karpowership to the national grid where the country will benefit from the injection of additional power.

“We are making great progress,” GPL said in a post on Facebook.

“GPL and Karpowership team have completed testing the engines, transformers, fuel, metering and telecommunication systems on the powership. Our Engineers are currently finalizing testing of the protection relay devices to ensure there is communication between the ship and our Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system,” the statement further noted.

The SCADA system will monitor and control the power distribution network to ensure efficiency and system reliability.

Once completed on Thursday, the team will commence dispatching power from the powership to the grid.

The power will be injected into the DBIS incrementally, beginning with Berbice and continuing through the various load centres in Demerara.

The 36-megawatt power ship will provide extra power to the national grid and significantly help to bring relief in the face of undergeneration by GPL.

The power ship sailed to Everton on Saturday. There, it took up its final position and was connected to the grid on Wednesday.

The power ship is being rented by GPL from Karpowership International out of Turkey.

GPL has already paid a mobilisation fee of US$1 million to rent the power ship and it will pay 6.62 cents per kilowatt hour as a monthly charter fee plus 0.98 cents per kilowatt hour on maintenance, based on electricity generated.

The deal to rent the power ship was signed on April 13 with Urbacon Concessions Investments, W.L.L (UCI) to rent the power ship for two years.