Arm’s projected capacity being exaggerated
Mme promises project will deliver
hours…. We are just going through some testing now, because remember, this farm is the first of its kind in Guyana and so we are doing testing and as soon as we iron out all the issues, [and] kinks in the process and we start full operation with the farm, we move to 17 hours and gradually to 24 hours, because we always intended to move to 24 hours,” Williams said.
In response to the Regional Chairman’s claims that the farm lacks the necessary mechanism to store the energy which is being produced, the CEO explained that while there are batteries that have the capacity to store power, they will more serve as a stability mechanism for the system.
“Those would mainly be for stability of the system… The system, as he mentioned, is a hybrid system, which means we will be running solar along with the diesel generator. What that will do is reduce the consumption of diesel, so the storage that we have is mainly to add stability,” he said.
“Generally storage is costly, so first we would move to the hybrid system to reduce fuel consumption and eventually we are hoping to add more supply from other renewable energy sources and maybe even expand on the solar sometime in the future,” Williams added.
When asked if the proposed Hosororo Hydropower project would be one such source, the CEO said, “The Hosororo is a small site, but as GEA is implementing that project, we expect that our local engineers will learn from the process of developing small hydro systems, etc. So that’s a learning process, but it will contribute yes to the electricity system in Mabaruma.”
Significantly, he noted the plans to introduce metered systems to Mabaruma in order to track energy consumption by residents, particularly since persons have been paying a fixed monthly rate for the electricity they consume.
“The plan is to move to metering because at the moment there are no incentives for reducing electricity and fuel consumption, so the intention is to install meters and bill consumers based on consumption like we do on the coast. We will be moving from initially having 9 hours to 17 hours of electricity, and we will need information on how they will be consuming beyond the 9 hours, which will mainly be at nights or early in the morning,” he stated. “We are hoping to start the metering very shortly, we sent up meters there last week. A set of meters went up but we don’t have sufficient meters at this time for every consumer. We have over 700 consumers at this time, so we are going to start with the commercial entities and government buildings and then we will move down to residential buildings,” Williams stated.
Commenting on the progress made so far in setting up the system, the CEO said, “I don’t want to specifically put a time frame, as I said we are going through all the testing right now and it’s a new system in Guyana and I can’t predict at this time but we are hoping to be up and running fully before the end of the year.”
In the presentation of the 2017 budget, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan had announced a budgetary allocation of almost $1 billion to implement a series of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.
He said these interventions, to be channeled through and managed by the Guyana Energy Agency, would include the installation of the first solar farm on a large scale in Mabaruma. The Minister had also explained that when operational, the 400-kilowatt solar farm will afford an additional 17 hours of electricity to the 3,000 residents of Mabaruma.
Furthermore, he said government had also advanced the pursuit of additional solar farms, one with a capacity of 800 kilowatts at Lethem, another of 400 kilowatts at Mahdia, and one of 1.5 megawatts at Bartica.