With an increase in power outages over the past several weeks, President Irfaan Ali summoned the Board of Directors and top Managers of the Guyana Power and Light Company to State House this morning to express his dissatisfaction with the entity’s current performance.

In a statement, the President’s Office said the meeting also examined the exponential growth in demand, aged assets, and lack of redundancy in transmission. It was announced that the Government has already engaged UK Export Finance (UKEF) to explore financing options improvements to the transmission service.

The President also asked the utility company to consider alternative options to provide bridging energy to meet the demand while waiting for the completion of the gas to energy project.

GPL has explained that it expects a further growth in demand this year of around 30MW.

In September last year, the Power Company announced that there was an increase in peak demand, reaching 182 megawatts. At that time the company encouraged power conservation and there was even a move to remove large companies from the national grid during peak hours.

However, GPL later announced the purchase of several generating sets from the Dominican Republic. More than US$25 Million was spent on the purchase, but the power problems have persisted since then and have worsened in recent weeks. Now, there are questions surrounding the recently purchased generating sets and whether they are all in working condition.

This past weekend, several areas across the Demerara and Berbice areas were hit with multiple power outages, with many of them going on for a number of hours.

GPL has blamed technical and other issues for the recent power problems.

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