In 99 per cent of cases where the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) has experienced a total shutdown for 2023, it was as a result of human interference with the transmission lines.
At a press conference on Thursday to shed light on the recent spell of power outages, GPL Director of Power Generation and Delivery, Bharat Harjohn told media operatives that there have been countless instances of such.
Most cases include damage to the network as a result of vehicular accidents. In other cases where a construction zone is nearby, Harjohn elaborated that simply disrupting a certain area around the line can send a trigger to the protection system in place, causing a shutdown.
Consequently, the power company has taken a decision to institute penalties for these actions.
“Of recent, we started to implement penalties…These are things that we will be taking a no-nonsense approach…For the year so far, we had 99 per cent of the cases of total shutdowns as a result of people or vehicles coming in contact with the network,” Harjohn relayed.
Recently, an excavator came into contact with a high voltage wire in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), and the 13,000 volts fed back into the Kingston plant.
Minister within the Public Works Ministry, Deodat Indar added that this caused tremendous damage to three engines.
“One excavator swing and hit the high voltage wire. When you have that high voltage going through, it feeds back into the substation and the substation shuts down to protect itself, but the cylinders on the engines were damaged. That’s two engines at 5.5 megawatts…You know how many thousands of customers had to be out of power because of that incident?” Indar questioned during the presser.
In another instance, an incident involved someone cutting bamboo trees at Friendship on the East Bank of Demerara, which later came into contact with the 69,000-volt transmission lines. This also fed back into the Garden of Eden power plant, also causing damage to the engines.
“It’s high voltage. We have to now bring up back these engines and change out parts. While that is happening, thousands of customers are out of power. That’s insult to injury,” the Minister stressed.
