Country braces for more blackouts -as GPL scrambles to repair Chinese submarine cable
In December 2014, a US$42M transmission line project that included seven sub-stations and submarine cables across the Berbice and
Demerara River to create an interconnected system was launched.
The damaged cable yesterday.
It was one of the more expensive projects for GPL’s aging infrastructural. It was supposed to start readying the power company for facilitating electricity from the Amaila Falls hydro project.
GPL also built a 26-megawatt power station at Vreed-en-Hoop, the biggest of its kind in the country. It powered not only West Demerara but via the submarine, fibre-optic cable, the extra power was fed into the system in the city that was linked to Berbice.
Since 2015, that cable has gone down three times, leaving East Demerara and Berbice without almost 14 megawatts of power.
The cost to repair was more than US$1M on the last occasion a couple of years ago, not counting the loss of production hours to affected homes and businesses.
On Sunday evening, the submarine cable linking Vreed-en-Hoop to the Kingston power station went down yet again.
Demerara and Berbice will have to wait as GPL explores a number of options, including running a link across the 
Demerara River at Craig, East Bank Demerara to bring the extra power. To run that link at Craig will take days.
In the meantime, it will take over a month to repair the current submarine cable.
The Demerara and Berbice area need those extra megawatts as two generators, that would have produced over 14 megawatts, are down for overhaul and repairs.
GPL has been forced since Sunday to cut power to areas in a phased manner.
Yesterday, divers and technicians bought up the cable. It was badly damaged, suspected to be from an anchor of ship that passed or stopped on the Demerara River.
According to Ryan Ross, Director of Projects at GPL, in hindsight, the cable along the Demerara River from Vreed-en-Hoop to Kingston, should not have been laid like that.
The expanse he is referring to is one of the busiest maritime areas in the country, more so now with oil activities picking up.
To temporary relieve the situation, GPL is moving two generators it has in Essequibo at Anna Regina to Demerara with the hope to boost its generation.
The damaged cable yesterday.
Currently, the East Demerara and Berbice area demand more than 100 megawatts of power with only 90 being produced.
Last evening the power company released another schedule of power outages for today that said that several parts of the city, East Coast and West Demerara and East Bank Demerara would be affected. The outages would last from 8am with some areas to be affected until 10pm.
The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Albert Gordon, who was present at a press conference yesterday at his Duke Street office, along with Bharat Harjohn, Director of Operations; and Kempton France, Systems Engineer; disclosed that the company would need more than US$100M to build another cable across the Demerara River, another one to link the troubled line between Sophia and Kingston power plants, and other distribution and transmission upgrades.
Work will also have to target new generation sets.
GPL is targeting the completion of these projects for 2023 and is sourcing financing and using some of its own resources.
GPL is the most criticized utility in Guyana with Government exploring options of natural gas, solar farms and wind as alternatives.
Businesses have been complaining bitterly over the years about the high cost of electricity. There have been moves to engage Giftland and even Banks DIH to purchase additional power.
GPL’s fragile system has been taking a beating in recent months with one power outage after another.
Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson, has been complaining too. He places the blame on the Opposition which was in government until 2015.
“GPL just can’t catch a break! For the third time since I have been minister, the submarine cable has been damaged. While efforts are underway to ensure that repairs are effected within the shortest possible timeframe. GPL has many challenges, foremost of which are the poor decisions made by the previous administration.
“Despite warning from MARAD and the Shipping Association – the so called brilliant previous government laid a cable across the busiest shipping lane in the country.”
Meanwhile, in a late afternoon statement, GPL said that its officials with assistance from contracted deep water divers, retrieved sections of the submarine cable approximately 714 metres/0.7 km from the Kingston operation.
“Upon examination, the armor and insulation protection of the submarine cable (were found to show) damage which extend to the conductors within the cable.
“Further examinations along the remaining length of the cable that rests within the channel of the Demerara River extending to Vreed-En-Hoop will be conducted tomorrow. Thereafter, our company will provide updates.”
