Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips said that residents and business owners in these communities will soon see their electricity bills being slashed. Residents in Port Kaituma in Region One and Mahdia in Region Eight are already benefiting from a windfall in the form of lower electricity prices.
“We are observing and analysing the results that are coming in from places like Lethem, they have a solar farm plus they have mini hydro…So most of their power is from renewable energy,” the prime minister disclosed during the Starting Point Podcast on Sunday.
“We have the solar farm commissioned at Onderneeming [and] another one at Charity. Those communities will benefit from a reduction in the cost of electricity that they pay right now,” the prime minister said.
Looking ahead, the government aims to bring online about 50 megawatts (MW) of power from solar farms and mini hydropower grids alone, bringing additional relief to thousands of consumers.
Under the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), with funding from the Guyana/Norway partnership, five of the eight planned Guyana Utility Scale Solar Photovoltaic Programme (GUYSOL) solar farms are already in operation.
They are in Charity and Onderneeming in Region Two (three MW); Trafalgar in Region Five (four MW), and Prospect and Hampshire in Region Six.
Prime Minister Phillips said construction is now concentrated in Region 10, including a three megawatt farm at Dakoura, four megawatts at Block 37 and eight megawatts at Retrive in Linden, which will be the largest solar project to date.
On Tuesday, the government will be engaging community members and stakeholders on these projects at the Watooka Guest House in Linden.
The remaining power will come from mini hydropower plants at Moco-Moco and Kumu in Lethem, Region Nine, Kato in Region Eight and other solar farm projects at Bartica in Region Seven, Mahdia in Region Eight, and Wakenaam and Leguan in Region Three.
“Based on the total sum of the projects, just about 50 megawatts of renewable energy will be online definitely by the end of 2026,” the PM explained.
These include 37,000 solar panels given to Amerindian, hinterland, and riverine communities in Guyana, many of which are receiving them for the first time.
The government aims to build 100 MW of solar farms in the next five years and is planning a 165 MW Amaila Hydropower Project to help reduce energy costs.
All of these interventions are part of the government’s energy mix agenda as outlined in the comprehensive Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) 2030. (Department of Public Information)
