Giftland to begin supplying GPL grid on Sunday

The Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) will begin receiving a maximum five megawatts (MW) of power from the Giftland Mall on Sunday. This was disclosed by Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Operations, Mr. Samaroo Ramtahal today.

Mr. Ramtahal said this initiative forms part of GPL’s efforts to provide more reliable energy to Guyanese.

“We are working aggressively to bring on this five-megawatts of power to the GPL grid because of the generation capacity shortage that we have. From time to time we have reliability issues, so we are hoping that this five-megawatts would be on stream Sunday,” he said.

The 5MW of power will be added to GPL’s Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System.

Mr. Ramtahal added that the company is training 12 operators of the Giftland Mall to ensure a smooth transition and operation of the system when up and running.

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“Today we are in the final stage … We have a full team here to provide the training, dot the Is and cross the Ts so that when we go live, we have no issues or challenges,” the Deputy CEO said.

Manager of GPL’s System Control and Engineering Services, Mr. Deryck Phil conducted the training.  Speaking on the importance of the training, he said Giftland was like an island which supported itself, but when connected it will be “a different kettle of fish.”

“You have a network of over 140 megawatts of power and they are just five megawatts. So, coming on to the network there will be a number of issues. They will have to be able to synchronise … their system with ours. They have to look at load flows; they have to understand the dynamics of the power system,” he explained.

“We are going to have some of our operators spend about two weeks with them to give them a feel on operating the power system,” Mr. Phil added.

GPL will be paying Giftland Mall $35M per month for the supply of energy through a Power Purchase Agreement.