Jagdeo keen on Guysuco co-generation project
By Gitanjali Singh
Stabroek News
March 27, 2003
President Bharrat Jagdeo says the government is actively seeking funding for the shelved Guyana Sugar Corporation (Guysuco) co-generation project, which has the potential to supply the entire East Berbice with electricity.
Speaking with reporters at an impromptu briefing at the State House last week, the President said he was in full support of using renewable power and had asked the Minister of Agriculture, Navin Chanderpal, for the costing associated with delaying the co-generation project.
Guysuco had planned to spend around US$20M in high-speed boilers to produce 25 megawatts of power using bagasse to support the Skeldon Factory Project. Twelve megawatts were to be sold to the national grid, increasing to 15 megawatts at peak time.
However, the project was shelved mainly as a result of what Guysuco says was its inability to reach a meaningful power purchase agreement with Guyana Power and Light (GPL), similar to complaints of hydropower developers.
There is a small window of opportunity available to resuscitate the project as conceptualised by Guysuco.
The co-generation station was to be installed adjacent to the new factory at Skeldon and would supply the factory and sell the remainder power to the national grid.
However, the new factory has been reconfigured to include its own low pressure boiler and power plant to supply its own power needs and tender for the procurement and construction of this factory is to be done before the end of April.
This leaves less than a month for agreement to be reached on the separate co-generation station to alter the designs of the factory.
Additionally, the co-generation project also requires an investor and while the rate of return would have had to be attractive, Guysuco needs to secure a power purchase agreement or even a memorandum of understanding with GPL to secure the interest in the project.
This co-generation investment would need to proceed in parallel with the Skeldon factory project because its manufacture and construction period is also two years.
The project would need to be in place to supply power for the new Skeldon Factory's start-up by the second crop of 2005.
Guysuco was hoping to secure around US$10M of the investment from the Global Environmental Facility or the Prototype Carbon Fund because of the environmentally friendly nature of the project. The project would aid in the reduction of global carbon dioxide emissions.
GPL's fuel engines at Canefield have a capacity of no more than 11 megawatts of power.
This means the Guysuco project would have supplied the entire Berbice with its need for electricity. Sources have indicated that the transmission network in Berbice is much better than in the city and its environs and technical losses would not have been great, thereby allowing for adequate power supply to consumers.
Booker Tate, the managing company for Guysuco, is currently working on a co-generation project in another country and the Guysuco official indicated that for it to work, the government had to take a lead role in the issue and not leave it up to GPL and Guysuco to reach agreement.
