Georgetown: Minister of State Joseph Harmon says Government will do whatever it takes to ensure Guyana has reliable energy.
His statement was in response to GPL’s CEO, Albert Gordon’s announcement that the power company needs US$150 million to repair and upgrade the country’s distribution system.
“Whatever is necessary to be done to ensure that our citizens have a continuous reliable supply of energy for domestic use and for industrial use that is the direction in which the Government is going,” Harmon says.
With regards to the sum, Harmon opined that it is to meet GPL’s long-term objective.
“What GPL I believe is putting out now is a futuristic position which says well look; this is what we will need not just to fix the situation but to prepare and to give you a certain level of power that is assured. That is sustainable and that you can basically plan your lives around it,” he says.
The Government’s Chief Spokesman says the matter is yet to be addressed at the level of Cabinet.
Amid constant power outages, new Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), Albert Gordon, says the company requires US$150M to address urgent shortcomings in the operating systems of the entity.
“We need to do some major reconfigurations, “Gordon said on Wednesday evening during a meet-and-greet session with the media at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston. Gordon said while the company is working to provide service with its existing resources , it would require a sum of US$110M to first address system deficiencies and another US$40M to fix the generators at the power company.
He said during his first two days here in Guyana earlier this year, the system had shut down twice and according to him, he has identified the major challenge facing him, which is “keeping the lights on.” He said that there are different contributors to the system failing, including configuration of the existing system infrastructure. “Right now there are serious deficiencies in the system that we need to address,” he said. He said that a simple deficiency in the system would be the configuration of the power lines which connect to homes in which he noted that in several instances the lines are connected directly to the generators of the company. “That’s not how you normally configure a power system,” Gordon said. He said that the power is first generated, there is an increased voltage to power lines, the power is then sent to a sub-station and the voltage is then reduced and then distributed to homes.
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