Press Release
May 21, 2019 Demerara Berbice Interconnected System Shutdown
MEDIA RELEASE
May 21, 2019 Demerara Berbice Interconnected System Shutdown
Georgetown, Guyana: May 21, 2019: At approximately 07:55 hrs on Tuesday, May 21, 2019, the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) experienced a shutdown due to loss of generation capacity which may have originated at the Kingston 1 Plant which was at the time supplying in excess of 11 MW. Due to the simultaneous failure of the software that records operating parameters at this plant, further investigation which is required remains ongoing.
Incremental power restoration began around 08:15 hrs along sections of the East Bank Demerara and central Georgetown with continuation into all remaining areas in both Counties. The last area was repowered at 09:38hrs.
May 19, 2019 Service Interruption
The scheduled maintenance agenda for Sunday May 19, 2019 was successfully effected. GPL Inc. performed vital maintenance work on our 69 kv busbars at our Sophia Substation, L5 transmission line linking the Kingston to Sophia Substations, and the 69 kV line (L10) linking the Sophia and new Georgetown Substations. This included the replacement of defective primary poles, transfer of high voltage mains and line hardware.
The aforementioned work was completed approximately ninety minutes beyond the schedule of 17:00 hrs due to unforeseen circumstances.
May 20, 2019 Service Interruption
At approximately 7:58 hrs on May 20, 2019, broken secondary poles and downed 13.8 kv distribution lines along the Sophia Backlands resulted in a feeder trip causing an interruption in the supply of electricity for customers from A to E Fields Sophia and North Sophia to Success, ECD.
Due to the unfavourable ground conditions, coupled with the inclement weather conditions experienced across Guyana’s Coast yesterday, our efforts to accelerate remedial work was hindered. As a result, while customers from A to E Fields Sophia were repowered within ninety minutes of the outage, customers from North Sophia to Success remained without electricity until 18:30hrs.
The section of the distribution network aback of Sophia that was affected on May 20, did not benefit from maintenance activities performed on transmission lines on May 19; this fault occurred on the secondary 13.8kv distribution network.
Our Company remains fully cognizant of the inconvenience caused by these outages and offer sincerest apologies.