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Sep 09, 2014 News
– GEA recommends stand-alone solar-powered street lighting
By Rabindra Rooplall
For the first half of this year, Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) said that it lost almost $30M a month due to illegally installed street lamps. There will be continuous campaigns to regularise or remove illegal lamps to cut these losses, the GPL management said.
GPL officials explained that there are over 2000 lamps that are burning electricity on a 24-hour basis at a cost of over $14M per month and another 4000 lamps utilising power on a 12-hour basis and costing $12M per month.
These street lamps have been installed illegally across the country. The bulk of them are in Regions Three, Four, Five and Six.
The GPL official stated that they began several meetings last year with the NDCs so that applications can be made for street lamps. However, there has been little success in implementation.
The power company plans to remove all illegal street lamps from within various communities, and although many residents are affixing these lamps for security reasons. It can be even simpler to pay $3,000 a month per lamp which can light up a section of the street. GPL plans to remove these once the customer does not enter into a payment plan. The power company is once again advising that persons can visit GPL and sign up for a contract in which they can pay for the charges of the street lamps they are using.
The power company is looking at the possibility of prepaid meters for street lights and they have seen the technology used in Germany where credit from one’s cell phone is used to power street lamps.
“People who are benefitting from those lamps should pay…We are looking at another technology which is quite expensive but it makes sense. We’re also looking at solar lamps for housing developments,” one GPL official explained.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GPL Incorporated, Bharat Dindyal, had said that GPL faces a lot of constraints in terms of financing, technical and commercial losses and fuel prices. However, the company is going places; a lot of developments are underway that will lead off drastic improvements in service delivery.
Meanwhile, based on a study done by the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA), there are about 14,000 street lamps installed throughout Guyana. The main types of street lamps are the 250 watts high pressure sodium vapour (HPSV) lamps and 175 watts mercury vapour lamps. These 14,000 street lamps consume about 12 million kWh of energy annually at an estimated cost of G$670 million per year.
The GEA noted that through the use of stand-alone solar-powered street lighting and the use of light emitting diode (LED) lamps, it is possible to significantly reduce the cost that the current street lighting systems incur. These lights utilize photovoltaic (PV) technology which harnesses the sun’s energy by converting it into electricity.
The abundance of sunlight in Guyana, and the region at large, therefore makes solar-powered street lighting a very attractive alternative to street lighting powered by electricity from the public utility.
The LED lamps also have an estimated lifetime that is five times longer than conventional HPSV lamps and energy savings of 80 per cent or more.
The stand-alone solar powered street light consists of a 140W solar panel, 40W LED lamp, 105Ah battery, charge controller, timer, enclosure and mounts.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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