GPL fails to live up to promise of fewer power outages
More than a month after the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) promised that there would be fewer power outages, the opposite has been occurring and there has been no explanation from the company.
In a statement on November 1, 2016 GPL had explained to the public that most power outages were the result of feeder trips and that a November 6 comprehensive maintenance exercise on the medium voltage (11 kv, 50 Hz) and high voltage (69kv) transmission line linking the Kingston Power Station to the Sophia Substation would be conducted as part of efforts to reduce these occurrences.
One day after the scheduled maintenance plunged the city and sections of the East Coast into a blackout lasting between 10 and 13 hours, GPL declared it a success and promised Guyanese a “problem-free holiday season.”
This promise has not materialized, instead there has been an increase in both the frequency and timing of power outages. Throughout last week, blackouts have been occurring across the country as often as three times per day. Yesterday, specifically, the city and its surrounding areas had outages four times over an eight-hour period.
Attempts by Stabroek News to contact GPL’s Public Relations Department failed. However, when contacted, the company’s emergency customer service hotline supplied the information that a system failure had occurred due to several shutdowns throughout the day. The customer service representative could provide neither a location nor cause for these shutdowns, nor could she say whether customers could expect uninterrupted service for the rest of the day.
While residential customers expressed their frustration at being unable to complete household tasks and took to social media to lambaste the power company, one businessman has expressed his determination to remove his company from the power company’s grid in 2017.
The businessman who operates a technology-based company explained to Stabroek News that over the last week he and his staff have lost at least one entire workday to power outages.
“This month has 20 workdays and I have lost one because of GPL. That’s means that 5% of our payroll has been allocated to a day of no work,” he said, adding that one of the main tenets of his company is efficiency which they have been unable to achieve as a customer of GPL.
“We aim for efficiency in our work and can’t achieve that without power so we are 100% certain that we are pursuing a nonGPL solution in the New Year. Demerara Bank has thrown out the idea of solar loans and the government has offered exemptions on solar equipment so I’ll be pursuing that avenue,” he explained.
He is not alone. Several minutes after he expressed his frustration and stated his intention on social media two other local businessman commented that they had already taken steps to have their businesses powered through solar energy.