Prime Minister promises "no blackouts" for Christmas

Prime Minister Mark Phillips has assured that there will be no power outages for Christmas now that the second power ship is being connected to the national grid.

The Prime Minister together with officials from the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) visited the ship’s terminal at Ruimveldt where work was ongoing to connect the power ship, and conduct testing.

GPL’s capacity is expected to grow by approximately 60 megawatts, and the likelihood of there being power outage is slim, says the Prime Minister.

“Based on this project, all things being equal, there will be no blackout for Christmas. There will be no need for any load-shedding. Any blackout you may suffer may be as a result of some vehicle hitting some power line or damaging part of the transmission-distribution system, which are a couple hours of blackout, you know, just to facilitate corrective work and then they connect again,” the Prime Minister said.

Prime Minister Phillips said he was impressed with the process to connect the power ship to the national grid, and he has been assured that the ship will be connected and in operation with power being distributed in time for Christmas, in keeping with Government’s commitment.

In the interim, he is asking Guyanese to be patient.

“We want to ask the people, especially the people who are suffering from power outages as a result of this project to bear with us. It is a controlled power outage to ensure that we connect and test. So, when we ready to evacuate, it will be a smooth evacuation of power and everybody will have electricity, more power for Christmas,” the Prime Minister said.

GPL’s acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Kesh Nandlall told reporters that testing was being done at the time.

“We should be ready to deliver electricity to the grid as promised before Christmas. So, we are working, we don’t anticipate any major issue so far. We are doing all our protection testing and we have to do some capacity testing on the vessel and start up and move on with that,” he explained.

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.

The Government believes that the rental of the power ships is feasible, and it will be a short term solution while the gas-to-energy project is being finalized.

Prime Minister Phillips said the immediate goal is to ensure stable electricity for the holiday season.

To facilitate its connection to the local grid, a 3.9 km double circuit 69 kV transmission line is currently under construction from Ruimveldt, where the ship is docked, to GPL’s New Georgetown Substation.