For every megawatt of electricity produced, the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) suffers a 30 percent loss due to poor wiring or old connections. And based on the latest assessment of GPL by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), this state of affairs is expected to remain unchanged for the next two years.
This is in spite of the fact that the company’s five year plan shows that it is budgeted to spend approximately USD $30 million on its transmission and distribution systems. During this period, GPL believes technical losses would be reduced from 15.24% in 2018 to 14.81% in 2022.
The Commission which holds a dissimilar view has since urged GPL to review its current technical loss reduction programme to determine whether more financial resources could be allotted into the programme to fast track the reduction of these losses.
On a positive note, the PUC did note that GPL’s on-going programme to install approximately 85,000 Advance Meter Infrastructure (AMI) meters which commenced in 2014 under the Power Utility Upgrade Program (PUUP) has gained momentum. AMI meters are state of the art meters, which are not easily susceptible to tampering.
In the company’s five-year Development and Expansion Plan 2018-2022, GPL had projected that in 2018, under the PUUP programme, 21,696 AMI meters will be installed nationwide. The projection fell short as only 14,695 AMI meters were installed.
At the end of the current Development and Expansion programme, the company anticipates that commercial losses, which are losses associated with consumers theft of electricity, would be reduced from its current 14.7% at the end of 2017 to 8.22% at the end of 2022. This reduction will be mainly attributable to the installation of the AMI meters.
