Highlighting significant improvements at the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL), President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali announced on Thursday that the power company is now generating more electricity than the current demand. The President revealed this information when questioned about the company’s performance in recent weeks.
“GPL’s generating capacity now is at 192 megawatts. The current peak demand is 178 megawatts. So, for the first time in more than a year…we are ahead of the peak demand. The injection of the [megawatts] from the power ship has tremendously assisted us in this,” the President pointed out.
In mid-April this year, peak demand was around 180 megawatts (MW), while GPL’s generating capacity was about 177MW.
To address this shortfall, the government contracted Urbacon Investments to procure a power ship, which would provide approximately 36MW of power to the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS).
The power ship was connected in mid-May, providing much-needed support to Guyana’s energy infrastructure. Despite this improvement, President Ali noted that due to continuous growth in demand ongoing planning is essential.
“Whilst the power ship came and it has eased the situation tremendously…we have an evolving situation where the growth is exponential…we have to start planning for this growth by the end of the year,” he explained.
The President noted too that an intentional effort must be placed on a public awareness program so that the wastage of energy will decrease.
“We have to look at educating the public, because one of the things you see in countries is that when the cost of energy comes down, there is a waste of energy…we have to start very early…on how we educate the public on the efficient and effective use of power,” President Ali detailed.
To support the increasing demand for energy, the gas-to-energy project is also in progress. This project is expected to boost the country’s generating capacity to nearly 500MW by the end of 2025.
