April 6, 2024
Georgetown, Guyana.
For immediate release to all media houses.
PRESS RELEASE
AFC statement from April 5th press conference.
GPL – David Patterson MP
The Alliance for Change joins with the rest of the country in bemoaning the state of our power generation sector, this woeful situation is not unexpected, the AFC, via numerous public statements, predicted this national catastrophe since 2020, sadly, the PPP government were too blinded and arrogant to heed our warnings.
On assuming office in 2015, we inherited a dysfunctional power system, in dire need of major capital and technical investments, unlike the current government, we did not seek to cast blame on our predecessors, but rather the Coalition administration set about repairing and upgrading the entire power generating network.
Our first priority was determine the challenges facing the sector, then we proceeded to develop short, medium and long term strategies to improve the network, this required hiring new management staff (an internationally recruited CEO), technical training for the existing staff, procurement of additional generating capacity, upgrade and repairs to our poorly functioning transmission and distribution network, while we will readily admit that the sector was not perfect by 2020, it was however heading in the right direction.
Despite the conflicting misinformation being peddled by the PPP, we procured over 60+MW of new generating power, upgraded over 1000km of high and medium voltage lines, installed new transformers and boosted our protection network, these actions resulted in a more reliable electricity supply and a reduction in the frequency of blackouts.
Not within standing the claims now being made by the PPP, the proof of the pie is in the eating – during no period under the coalition administration were blackouts, so pronounced and frequent – this is an incontestable fact.
We prepared a comprehensive strategy to carry the sector forward, recall that the gas to energy project was birthed under the Coalition, albeit at quarter the cost of the current Wales Gas to Shore project, funding were secured for several renewable projects, most of which have either severely mutilated or abandoned by the PPP administration, projects for major upgrades to the T&D network were underway, sadly these have also be shelfed by the PPP.
While the Coalition administration considered a Gas to Shore project of 200MW (US$500M), as being the major generating source in the short to medium term, we also understood that until the commissioning of such a plant, additional investments in power generation would have been required during the interim period.
After the procurement of the 46.5MW plants now operating at Garden of Eden, GPL launched a RFI for an additional 50MW, these bids were to be returned by September 1, 2020 – however the PPP scraped this process.
Based on GPL expansion plans, 100MW of new power was needed for the period 2020 – 2022, at the end of that period, the proposed Gas to Shore project, as originally designed, would have been commissioned, thus incrementally injecting a further 200MW into the system, sadly all these plans were scraped by the PPP, who has placed all their eggs in a single basket, being the Wales Gas to Shore project, a project which on its current trajectory will not deliver on its project promises.
It is important to note that all the new generating sets proposed to be procured were designed as modular dual – fueled units, in other words once natural gas was landed, these new sets in a matter of days, could have been switched over to natural gas, thus ensuring maximum value for our investment, the new Garden of Eden plants already has this capability. The PPP version is to mothball all our existing plants, thus making all earlier investments “Sunk Costs.’
The current blackouts are entirely due to the lack of forth sight and planning by the government, currently there is a shortfall in generating capacity of approximately 35MW – 40MW, several units are down at the Kingston location, while the new plants at Garden of Eden are operating below their listed capacity – all because of poor maintenance practices.
In January 2016, a new unit called Power Producer Distributors Inc. (PPDI) was established, this company took over the operation and maintenance contract from Wartsila, which at the time was staffed entirely by Guyanese – in fact, for the preceding three years before 2016, all the major overall were undertaken by the Guyanese staff.
By way of background, when Guyana first purchased Wartsila sets, that company was awarded the O&M contract, notably this was the very first time that Wartsila executed an O&M contract, anywhere in the world, over the years, they entered several other such O&M contracts and exported Guyanese technical staff to run these new contracts.
In 2015, Wartsila was proposing US$20.51 per megawatt hour compared to the US$16.78 that PPDI charged. That is US$3.73 per megawatt hour or US$2.4M savings annually on 650,000 megawatt hours per year for GPL.
PPDI was able to provide and deliver performance guarantees (heat rate = fuel consumption, plant availability and lube oil consumption) superior to Wartsila’s, with a 98% operational rate (generation uptime), the company was able to achieve ISO certification within 2 years of formation signalling the quality with which it provided its services was world class.
In August 2020, PPDI had 140 employees, 80 of whom were technical staff with extensive experience, both locally and internationally, as soon as the PPP returned to office, they fired all the senior technical staff on the pretext that they were “super-salaried”, since then more than 95% of the technical staff have resigned, most taking up international job offers, since in their own words they were “unable to stand the “cuss out culture” of the company”.
These days, engines seldom can achieve maximum output even after returning from major overhauls, the running programs for the restart of engines are not properly adhered to, the technical qualification system that were in place to develop employees is now dormant, so new employees lack a structured development program, and spare parts are seldom readily available.
GPL has more than 20 maintenance overhauls scheduled for 2024, some of which were deferred from last year, unfortunately due to the shortage of generating capacity, these maintenance programs will have to be deferred, since taking any of the generating sets off line, will further increase the energy deficit – this was the exact same position that the Coalition inherited in 2015, which was corrected but has now resurfaced with the return of the PPP.
No amount of PR, untruths and misinformation will resolve our electricity woes, nor will it replace equipment destroyed by continuous voltage fluctuations. Families and businesses need the Government to make improvements within a properly constructed plan and provide a stable, reliable service for customers, which is foundational to our country’s development.
As always, the Alliance for Change stands ready to assist, since it is clear that the PPP administration is clueless with regards to the management of our electricity sector.
END.
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