GPL to spend $200M to upgrade national grid – Jagdeo
Kaieteur News – The Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) intends to spend approximately $200 million to upgrade the national grid, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo announced last Thursday.
Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo
The Vice President was at the time speaking at a press conference held at the Office of the President. He was asked to provide an update on the additional 30MW of power the government intends to acquire in a similar arrangement with the Turkish Powership – Karpowership – contracted by the government to supply Guyana with some 36 megawatts of electricity for two years.
“So the existing system now we have to look at that with all that new power in the place, (that) we have grid stability to transmit and distribute the power. So they have come up and they have gone to tender for about $200M of work to upgrade the grid, put in more transformers, change out the lines and stuff like that,” Jagdeo said.
The Vice President explained that the updating of the national grid will ensure that the country has a more stable distribution system.
“If we can integrate the 30MW… so for example they are now working, I think Cummings would be awarded a contract to do a $5M upgrade from Kingston to Sophia so if you bring the power there now… if you bring additional power to Kingston you can’t take it to the sub-station at Sophia because that one line is not adequate to take the power there so it’s where you can integrate the power to,” he added.
Kaieteur News recently reported that at Thursday’s press conference, the Vice President also announced that the government will soon go to the National Assembly, before recess, to seek an additional US$66M to subsidize the GPL.
Jagdeo boasted that the government has absorbed the price increases that would have ordinarily been imposed on consumers due to the increase in the price of fuel.
“So the price of fuel went up from $70 dollars that we were budgeting; now, we are paying one $105 maybe $110 per barrel…”
Meanwhile, the Department of Public Information (DPI) reported that with the power ship supplying 36 megawatts of electricity to the national grid and the Gas-to-Energy project set to come on stream in 2025, adding approximately 300 megawatts of energy, the government is keen on ensuring that the national grid is fortified to manage the surge of electricity that will be utilised to meet the heightened demand.
“We have to look at the existing system [to ensure] that with all that new power now, we have grid stability to transmit and distribute the power…If we can integrate the 30 megawatts…we could have brought in the bigger power ship, which is nearly 80 megawatts of power, and connect it here at Kingston, but the lines can’t transmit it, so we had to take it to Berbice and hook it there, and then bring back the power to Demerara.”
