Giftland Mall is looking to renew its power purchase agreement with the Guyana Power Light (GPL) after the previous deal, which was inked in early 2020, has expired.
This was revealed by the Chairman of Giftland Group, Roy Beepat, during a recent interview with this publication.
“Right now, the lease agreement to supply power has expired and we’ve applied to have it renewed. We’re now awaiting permission [from GPL], so that it will be renewed,” Beepat related.
According to the Chairman, the renewal application was submitted about one month ago after the initial agreement expired earlier this year.
The power purchasing agreement was first signed in January 2020 under the previous APNU/AFC coalition Administration.
However, Giftland only started to supply the GPL grid with electricity in October 2020. It has a system that produces 6.7 megawatts of electricity, 5 megawatts of which is HFO [heavy fuel oil] fuelled. But it only uses 1.6 megawatts during prime operations at the mall.
As such, Government tapped into Giftland’s excess power supply to boost the capacity of the GPL grid, which had a generating capacity of 155 megawatts.
Beepat, when asked, could not say at the time how much power Giftland had supplied to the grid or the cost, since it started to supply electricity three years ago. However, the Government was charged only for the power it used from Giftland.
It was previously explained that a large portion of the sum being paid for power supplied is for fuel costs. The power alone costs at about $9.9 million per month, while fuel racks up an estimated $29.5 million.
According to the Giftland Chairman, they were able to supply as much as 3.2 to four megawatts of power during peak evening hours to the national grid.
However, under the previous power purchase deal, Giftland had encountered several issues with its generating system, which was out of commission for months in some instances.
Despite this, however, Beepat is confident of having the deal renewed especially since the company is investing heavily in overhauling its generating equipment. These works are currently being undertaken and the system is expected to be up and running by June.
“We’ll be ready to go ahead [and supply power] in June. Right now, we’re doing some overhauls of our equipment. So, we won’t be able to go ahead until June should they decide to renew the power [purchase] agreement now,” he explained.
GPL is keen to buy power to boost the national grid. In October 2022, the power company advertised for private contractors to supply 50 megawatts of HFO-generated power through power purchase agreements.
“The total capacity per Lot shall be base-load and is intended to bolster the current and forecasted demand for a period of 5 to 11 years,” the ad stated.
The required total of 50 megawatt is divided into two lots: Lot 1 – Supply of HFO-fired 25 MW gross capacity interconnected with New Sophia Substation or at the alternative Columbia Substation at 69 kV, and Lot 2 – Supply of HFO-fired 25 MW gross capacity interconnected with Canefield Substation at 69 kV.
Only last month, GPL reported an average of 96 hours of power interruption in 2022, a 10 per cent reduction from the amount experienced in the previous year.
The power company’s Divisional Director (Power Generation and Distribution) Bharat Harjohn, made this disclosure during an appearance before the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in March for a review of GPL’s 2022 Operating Standards and Performance Targets (OSPT).
Harjohn divulged that a number of factors cause the frequency and duration of outages, including plant maintenance, emergency outages, transmission and feeder line trips, switching activities on the network to allow for maintenance or isolation of a fault, generation shortfall, and generation trips.
“When we compare 2022 to 2021, we are seeing that there is an improvement in plant maintenance…it is related to the duration of the outages. There was also a reduction in emergency repair work…there is a reduction in feeder trips. Generation trips, there was an increase in 2022,” Harjohn said.
The Government has embarked on a host of endeavours to upgrade the country’s energy grid and supply distribution. Chief among them is the gas-to-energy project in Wales, West Bank Demerara.
The initiative features a 300-megawatt (MW) combined cycle gas turbine power plant and an integrated Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) plant using natural gas that will be produced offshore Guyana and piped onshore.
With a timetable to deliver rich gas by the end of 2024 and the Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) plant to be online by 2025, works are progressing on getting the project off the ground.
The combined cycle power plant is expected to generate up to 300 megawatts of power, with a net 250MW delivered into GPL’s grid on the East Bank of the Demerara River.
The US$900 million gas-to-energy project will have a 25-year lifespan and is expected to employ up to 800 workers during the peak construction stage, as well as some 40 full-time workers during the operations stage, and another 50 workers during the decommissioning stage.
