Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo today pleaded with citizens to be patient in light of the recent spate of power outages, attributing them to the ongoing infrastructure drive that includes road expansion projects.
“We’ve had a spate of blackouts, and I want to apologize again to people for this,” Jagdeo said at his press conference held at Freedom House.
He explained that the outages, including those experienced last week on the East Coast of Demerara, were necessary to facilitate the removal of utility poles for the completion of the four-lane road along the railway embankment between the Ogle roundabout and Sheriff Street.
He said this work resulted in two major outages last week, one lasting eight hours and another lasting 12 hours. It was noted that due to complications encountered during the pole relocation, there was an additional eight-hour power outage on Wednesday.
“But this represents a major problem for us because we have enough power in the system. We have enough power with the powerships and the other plants. It’s just that they have to interrupt power to move these utility poles for the construction activities, and it creates problems for people,” the Vice President noted.
Moreover, he referenced another road project, the widening of Woolford Avenue which he said similarly required a period of power outage to facilitate construction. “I want to urge the people who have been affected, to bear with us a bit. It’s not like we have a choice, we need the roads, but we also need the power in the system, because it’s disruptive to many, many people,” he added.
In relation to Thursday’s outage, Jagdeo said it was caused by an explosion at the Kingston power plant that impacted the entire Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS). However, he said the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) have assured him that generation capacity remains adequate.
“So I want to say to people, we the system we are putting in place, now, once the gas-to-energy is completed, all of those transmission mains that we have there will be removed onto these high towers,” he said, referencing the transformative impact of the gas-to-energy project.
Jagdeo said the existing wooden utility poles are being replaced with more durable concrete ones, which are expected to last decades. He pointed to the recently signed US$422 million contract to upgrade GPL’s transmission network to reach Parika, Berbice, and Linden.
“We’re trying to fix this system in a way that would last for the next 50 years into the future. That is what we are trying to do, but it comes with disruption and complication because of the how the system was built out in the past, we have to remove it,” Jagdeo explained.
He added that he hopes the public understands that the disruptions are part of the transition to a more stable, long-term solution.
Guyana currently has two agreements with a Turkish company for power ships for electricity supply. The first ship, docked in the Berbice River, provides electricity at a cost of US$0.206 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), while the second, at a rate of US$0.225 per kWh, bringing the total generation capacity to 96 megawatts.
