GPL hiring consulting firm to minimise disruptions in 2017

The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Inc. is hoping to reduce its disruptions in the first quarter of 2017 with a protection coordination study. The company will also begin transitioning to renewable energy.

In recent months, customers have been complaining about the number of service disruptions that are usually experienced and more so, during the just concluded holidays.

GPL is hoping to remedy this with the implementation of a study which intends to “have the right type of configuration that will maximise the protection on the network and all associated equipment.” This was disclosed by the company’s Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Renford Homer who on Wednesday gave an overview of GPL’s performance for 2016 and plans for 2017.

He said, “some situations which exists currently where there’s a disturbance that seems to affect quite a large number of customers, we expect that this study will be addressing things of that nature.”

Expressions of Interest for this project will close mid-January and according to Homer, it is his hope to have that consulting firm working closely with GPL in the first quarter of the year.

He also disclosed that GPL will be making some transition to renewable energy in the New Year.

“What we see in 2017 going forward will really be a shift in GPL method of operation with a focus on just purely fossil generation to taking onboard generation coming from renewable sources to strengthening its network to offering what is more seen as a fault-tolerant network to introducing into the network a level of redundancy, particularly on the transmission lines” he said.

The CEO (ag) explained that “currently we have the single transmission line that links the Kingston facility where we have new to our dispatch centre at Sophia. If we literally have an issue on that line, then it shakes up the system and causes an outage for a number of customers” and this shouldn’t be.

The Guyana Power and Light saw an increase in its number of customers in 2016 to 184, 788 from 181, 678 in 2015.