Latest update November 8th, 2024 1:00 AM
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Turkish company to supply 36 megawatts to ease blackouts – Jagdeo
Vice President (VP), Bharrat Jagdeo
Kaieteur News – The Government of Guyana is finalising an agreement with a Turkish power company – Karpowership for the supply of 36 megawatts of power to the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) company to ease the persistent blackouts that have plagued the country.
This was revealed by Vice President (VP), Bharrat Jagdeo during his weekly press conference held on Thursday at Freedom House. Jagdeo said that Karpowership would sell the electricity at 8 cents per megawatt over the next two years. He said Guyana would supply the fuel to the barge.
According to Jagdeo the power supply barge will help supply electricity until the Wales Gas to Energy– natural gas-fired electricity generation power plant is completed in 2025. “GPL continues to give us headaches and we are very much aware as I said last week about the problems it’s causing many people in this country. We have been inundated with complaints and people’s lives are being disrupted because of the situation.”
The Vice President said that the vessel would arrive in another two to three weeks and would be hooked up to the Guyana Power and Light’s grid at Everton, Berbice where the system could take off that magnitude of electricity. He said the system at Kingston, Georgetown would be unable to take off that amount of energy. The VP disclosed too that “We have not completed the contract as yet but there is a capacity charge and an ONM [Operation and Maintenance] charge and combined that’s less than 8 cents per kilowatt per hour but then we have to supply the fuel.” “They will supply the equipment to operate it but we supply the fuel. That would be less than 8 cents for the equipment and the OMN per kilowatt per hour.”
GPL’s peak electricity demand in the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) is just over 170 megawatts but existing generators are pushing just about 160 megawatts. Jagdeo said that he is part of a team of ministers working to address the power woes, efforts were continuing to hook up all of the 17 generators that GPL had acquired from APAN Energy at a cost of US$27.5 million to cater for the Christmas season demand.
“So we understand this from a policymaker’s perspective. The President has put together a group of ministers and I am part of that where we are on a daily basis looking at what is happening in GPL to ensure that all of the equipment… Last week, we looked at the equipment their age and why we are in this situation, given the lack of investment by APNU.”
According to the VP, the reality is all the equipment that should have been in reserve is still being used. “These are old equipment… We will be using that until the new power plant comes on stream. So we are focusing heavily on ensuring the current capacity that we have is maximised. That involves bringing to production some of the units that were bought and have not been brought online and fixing some of the equipment that have developed problems . So they told that hopefully by Saturday. They should be able to get most of the equipment or some of the equipment up and running again to allow us the capacity that maximizes the peak demand,” the VP added.
While he will not vouch for GPL, Jagdeo said that he was informed that the power supply company has been working in earnest to rectify the situation. He noted that simultaneously, a group of ministers including the Attorney General, the Minister of Finance, Minister of Public Works are working with a proposal. “Today, we are meeting with a company to supply emergency power. Hopefully, before the end of the week we can conclude this contract and have the vessel arrive in the country and maybe two to three weeks later we will see a significant injection of power into the grid in addition to what we have.”
“So, this will be we intend to contract this for two years until the Gas to Energy is completed. So we are hoping that within a matter of weeks we bring the situation to normalcy and then address any failure of equipment that we have experienced lately,” he added.
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