Power Ships supplying more power than GPL needs -Jagdeo

With the second power ship now connected to the national power grid, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo today boasted that the Guyana Power and Light company now has more electricity than is needed. He said the company now has a big reserve.

While still placing the blame on the country’s power woes at the feet of the previous government, although blackouts were less frequent then, Mr. Jagdeo said the rental and installation of the power ship marked a positive step for a stable electricity supply.

“That has allowed us now to have 267 megawatts of power installed, with the peak demand as of October was 205MW, with the demand now about 200MW. So, we have about 67MW of reserve, for the first time after a long time so now GPL has reserves, they are using part of it as spinning reserves and this would allow them to take out some of the other sets that would have had delayed maintenance and that would not affect the availability of power,” Mr Jagdeo said.

The country has been gripped with frequent blackouts over the last few years at various intervals, with the Government stating that more businesses and establishments were being connected to the grid.

Several used generators were bought and the first power ship was rented shortly after, but those did not ease the power problems.

This is the second power ship that the Government has rented within a year to address the country’s electricity woes. The price tag for the rental is expected to run into hundreds of millions of dollars, but the Vice President said he is pleased with the development and now expects better from GPL.

“We are expecting as the President said better levels of performance now that they have the adequate amount of power to meet the demand, in fact, the have way beyond the peak demand is. So, I am very pleased that this has happened in the last week and we dent expect blackouts the way we had because of the availability of power, there maybe be blackouts associated with faults in the transmission system from time to time,” the Vice President noted.

Mr. Jagdeo said the rental of the power ships is a transitional measure until the gas-to-energy project is implemented. The two ships are being rented for a period of two years.