The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Inc. is currently supplying more than one million imperial gallons of fuel every month to the 36-megawatt power ship docked at Everton on the East Bank of Berbice in Region Six.
This has been revealed in the National Assembly during the consideration of a $32.1 billion Financial Paper that includes $12 billion in subsidies for GPL.
Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips, who has responsibility for the country’s energy sector, was on Friday fielding questions from Opposition Member of Parliament David Patterson, who enquired about the use of the supplementary funds being sought for the state-owned power company.
The Prime Minister explained to the Committee of Supply that the money being asked for is to cover the procurement of some 1.641 million barrels of fuel for GPL – with more than a million gallons going to the 36-megawatt power ship in Berbice. He said, for “the power ship, 1,125,223 imperial gallons” of fuel is supplied per month.
As part of the multimillion-dollar deal that GPL signed back in April with Qatar-based Urbacon Concessions Investments, W.L.L (UCI) for the rental of the 36-MW power ship, Guyana has to provide the Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) to operate the generators on board the vessel.
GPL has since retained two companies – Horizon Maritime and Ocean Trader – to transport and store the fuel from Kingston/Vreed-en-Hoop to the location of the floating power plant in the Berbice River.
“Each company is being paid Gy$30 per gallon to transport the fuel,” the Prime Minister disclosed.
The power ship arrived in Guyana on May 1 this year, and after several days of technical work and testing to connect it to the national grid, the floating power plant became operational in just over a week. On May 18, GPL said the power ship incrementally increased its generational output to 35MW to the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS).
A capacity test done the following day confirmed the vessel was operating at its maximum capacity of 36MW.
According to PM Phillips, this still applies today.
“I would like to report to the house that we are paying for 36 megawatts and we are getting 36 megawatts,” the Prime Minister has said.
However, acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GPL, Kesh Nandlall, last month told this publication that GPL has had to reduce the power ship’s generating capacity to ensure reliability, but it is planned to restore the generation to the full 36MW.
Nandlall, in explaining that the ship’s generating capacity has been contributing significantly to the decrease in frequent power outages, has said, “Well, what it means is that we can deliver the power at 96% capacity onto the grid, and that is powering the grid right now through our transmission network and distribution network… So, we were having a significant amount of load shedding as a result of generation shortfall. Right now, that is not the case. We may have some intermittent outages, which are related to the transmission and distribution network from trips and so on.”
According to Nandlall, there has been no major issue experienced since the ship commenced operating.
“It’s really bringing reliability to an additional demand that has been created by the growth to the grid, and so that we can also take some of our current engines down and do regular maintenance that we had. We have to do, and we are able now; we have some capacity in place, so that we can carefully plan out our maintenance programme and execute those programmes so that we bring reliability to the system in delivering power to consumers.”
