As Guyana moves towards becoming an oil producing nation, a study on the Power Generation System expansion is being updated to meet the country’s growing potential.
According to the Department of Public Information (DPI), on Monday March 5, a forum was conducted at the Pegasus Hotel by the Sustainable Energy Programme, under the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, to discuss the updating of a 2016 Study on Guyana’s Power Generation System Expansion.
Agencies in the energy, infrastructure, and financial sectors as well as the, Office of Climate Change – Ministry of Presidency, Renewable Energy Department- Ministry of Presidency, were part of the forum, including the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL), the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA), Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Public Infrastructure.
While the 2016 study on Power Generation System Expansion included imported natural gas, it did not include domestic natural gas. It therefore became necessary to update the study to take into consideration Guyana’s move towards domestic natural gas in electricity generation, DPI said.
Coordinator of the Sustainable Energy Programme, Mr. Horace Williams explained, “A consultant group called Brugman SAS from Colombia was contracted to do the update and they proposed a set of activities and methodologies to update the 2016 studies.”
The updated 2018 study will focus on GPL’s power networks, with emphasis on the power expansion of the Demerara-Berbice interconnection system (DBIS) and the supply of electricity to Linden. It will also include an in-depth revision and analysis of renewable energy (RE) technologies and natural gas fired generation options.
Furthermore, according to DPI, the 2018 study will include a preliminary socio-environmental impact and risk analysis of the issues associated with the candidate generation technologies and an analysis of the current regulations in order to reach regulatory policy recommendations to foster renewable energy (RE) generation technologies.
Speaking on the side-lines of the event, Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson said that “the forum enables Guyana to provide cheap and reliable electricity to the country so we are looking at all the alternatives possible for us to get where we want to be so that we can be 100 percent renewable by 2025. But, in the interim, we want to provide the country with cheap electricity.”
A full report on the completion of the study is expected by this May. The cost of the consultation is US$ 183,000, DPI said.
