| By Leonard GildarieA number of generators on the West Demerara area are down and Government yesterday urged residents to bear up as technicians scramble to stabilize the situation.Numerous power outages were reported from Friday night prompting Prime Minister Sam Hinds, to visit the Versailles and Leonora power sites, to assess the situation.GPL officials at the Versailles power station: From right is Prime Minister Sam Hinds, GPL’s Deputy CEO, Ash Deonarine, a senior official of the company and Colin Singh, Operations Manager.The Prime Minister, who is performing the duties of the President, and whose portfolios also cover energy, in issuing an apology, described the situation as “tight” and called for patience.However, the problems were not on the West Demerara area alone.According to GPL, in a press statement yesterday, since Saturday the company has been experiencing a number of unscheduled power outages.“The heavy rains and high winds late last Friday night leading into Saturday morning caused a number of transmission and distribution lines to develop faults resulting in two total system shutdowns in the Demerara Interconnected System early Saturday morning.”According to GPL, line faults were identified on one of the distribution lines serving the East Coast Demerara, and another in Kitty causing customers in areas between Success and Coldingen along the East Coast and in Kitty/Campbelville, and parts of Prashad Nagar to be without electricity for some hours over the last three days. These faults have now been remedied and all areas repowered, the company said.In the Tucville area, two fallen poles caused customers in this area and parts of Ruimveldt to be without power since Saturday morning.“The area where these poles have fallen is not easily accessible and hence quick remedial work is not possible. To overcome this difficulty, our engineers are currently diverting the lines, and power will be restored by the end of (yesterday).”To exacerbate the problem, the power company said, both of the company’s frequency converters at Sophia developed electrical problems early Saturday morning resulting in a number of customers to suffer outages as a result of limited generation capacity at the required frequency.By Saturday afternoon, one of the converters was repaired and put back into service whilst the other was not put back into service until this afternoon. At the time of press release yesterday, GPL said, all areas in Demerara have been repowered.Regarding the West Demerara area, the heavy rainfall early Saturday morning, coupled with the high tide flooded out Versailles power station. The company was forced to shut down the station temporarily.“The temporary plant at Leonora could not supply power to the grid in the absence of power from Versailles. The only other source of power for the West Demerara is via a submarine cable from the Garden of Eden power station. However,Wholesale China Jerseys, the maximum amount of electricity that could be dispatched through this link is limited to approximately seven megawatts which is just over half of the demand.”Consequently, GPL said, many customers also experienced outages over the weekend leading on to early yesterday morning.“At the time of (this) press release, two units at Versailles and two units at Leonora have been repowered and supply restored to all our customers on the West Demerara.”The company, however, in expressing worry, noted that although power has been restored in the whole of Demerara, the rising demand depleted the small available generation margin and consequently any continued increase in demand may result in outages during peak hours.“We thank our customer for their continued patience and understanding and urge them to conserve as much energy as possible, and to report any faults/outages to our Emergency Call Centre on 225-4015 or 225-4016.”GPL stressed that it is cognizant that many customers may be trying to call its emergency numbers simultaneously and having to wait for inordinately long periods before the calls are answered.“This is because of the physical manpower limitations in our Call Centre to answer hundreds of calls at the same time. Once again, we plead to our customers to understand the situation and, if not successful at their initial attempt, to try calling at a later time.” |
