Blackout blues

Dear Editor,

We in this land have had enough with the shoddy planning and ineptitude of the managers of our principal energy supplier.

From the president down they have failed us very badly. There does not appear to be an efficient medium term or long term plan for the provision of electric energy to the nation. We seem to be moving from crisis to crisis.

Quite recently on a return trip from Berbice, I saw smoke coming from the stack of one of the 17 mobile power sets at Columbia. I was overjoyed that after more than two years we were getting these machines operational. Our major problems are lack of proper planning, preventive and predictive maintenance. We don’t properly know about these aspects of operational activity.

Otherwise would be able to predict accurately the mean time between failures and thus set systems in place to keep our machinery going. We have fallen down in that the costs for the power ships could have given us another substantial power station.

The gas to energy plant seems dead in the water.

Some 60 years ago I was the sole designer of the original Onverwagt, Versailles, Anna Regina and Ankerville, Port Mourant power stations.^[1] Ankerville was not constructed. All of these stations had a minimum of 20% spare capacity. It was further planned to increase base load capacity after a stated time span. That’s how we did things then. We avoided unnecessary power outages.

Editor when a head of state blames his population for over use of a facility and even overeating, then things have really gone down badly in that nation. Mere talk will not cut it. We need to bring in those persons who can really fix our system.

References

1. Sale and Safe Removal/ Dismantling of GPL’s Plant and Equipment at the Old Bartica; Versailles and Anna Regina Power Plants And The Safe Removal of Scrap Equipment and Metals from the Canefield & Onverwagt Power Plants And The #53 T&D Facility | Guyana Power and Light Incorporated — gplinc.com ↩