Electricity crisis costing country millions of dollars everyday -Opposition

Contending that the country is now facing an electricity crisis, the APNU+AFC Opposition today said the country may be losing as much as $150M per hour, every time there is power outage.

At a press conference, Economic Advisor to the Leader of the Opposition, Elson Lowe said the economic impact is being felt across sectors.

“A lot of businesses, especially small businesses are unable to function without electricity. The second cost, is that there is a spoilage of goods that require refrigeration, and a lot of small businesses are complaining about that. Additionally, one of the things to note, where businesses have to procure additional capacity, their own generators, really, those are costs that increase the cost of goods, because businesses then have to add on those additional costs to their goods, and so the current electricity crisis is actually going to drive up the cost of living,” Lowe explained.

A few weeks ago, the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) announced a decision to disconnect large customers from its grid during peak hours, but Mr. Lowe said that move did not improve the situation and the truth should be made known to GPL customers.

“Clearly that was either not the problem in the first place, or they have been utterly incompetent in remedying the situation. This must be rectified as soon as possible and President Ali, Vice President Jagdeo and Minister Edghill must take responsibility for this total failure of planning, management and execution,” the Opposition Economic Advisor said.

He said though the power company had long warned that there is a need for additional generation capacity, the Government has done little to ensure that GPL has the capacity to function in and out of peak season. He said the company needs at least 50 megawatts more to ensure there is a constant and reliable supply of electricity.

“The government seem to believe that it should only procure just enough capacity to barely meet generation needs. Even after additional capacity comes online in mid-December, we will still have generation capacity either below peak demand or barely at peak demand, depending on whom you ask. This is a recipe for blackouts the moment even the smallest issue affects some generators. The government must procure at least 50mw of additional electricity generation capacity so that we can properly mitigate the near-term blackout risk,” Lowe said.

He said until the Gas-to-Energy project is completed, there should be a renewed focus on adding reliable capacity to the system including the use of renewable energy.

Lowe said the government must invest in building a reliable transmission and distribution network, without which electricity supply will continue to be unreliable despite improvements in generation capacity.

Weighing in on the issue, the Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton said the Government, while focusing heavily on infrastructure development, has failed to address critical issues.

“We also during the budget debate flagged the fact that the Government was focusing on infrastructure, roads, bridges, etc, and not focusing on other elements that would impact the people. We felt that electricity was a priority and they were areas in which you could have removed resources from infrastructure, because anyhow, a lot of it wouldn’t be done because we don’t have the capacity, and if they had used those resources to put towards electricity, we would have been in a different position,” Norton said.

The Opposition said the Government must take the blame for the issues facing the Guyana Power and Light Company and not shift that blame to the business community and frustrated consumers.