Linden in electricity limbo again
By Cathy Wilson
Stabroek News
May 11, 2003
The town of Linden was plunged into total darkness early Friday morning when all the town's working diesel sets developed problems. The total shutdown lasted almost an hour. Since then communities have only been getting up to four hours of power at a time.
Over the past week the community and Linmine were being supplied with electricity generated by two of the three engines loaned to the community by GPL; two 1.5MW diesel engines leased from Macorp and two 2.5MW sets owned by the Linden Power Company. The third GPL engine has been down for more than a week. Reports indicate that the main cables for that engine were disconnected and returned to Georgetown.
On Thursday evening one of the engines leased from Macorp developed voltage problems and had to be taken off load. Up to press time that engine was inoperable. The other is currently undergoing servicing.
One of the 2.5MW sets owned by LPC went down having developed electrical problems. The limited electricity generated with the other LPC 2.5MW engine along with one of the GPL sets was supplying the bauxite plant and a small section of the community. The other two GPL engines have developed multiple problems resulting in them being down.
Stabroek News understands that LPC workers are not allowed to carry out any maintenance work to the GPL engines and when the problems developed on Thursday night none of the GPL/ MACORP workers were on spot to rectify the problems. It was reported that those technicians arrived in the town some time yesterday afternoon.
Again the water supply to the town, mainly Wismar, was interrupted while sections of Mackenzie have been getting a continuous supply of water.
According to reliable sources, the management and workers of the Linden Power Company had anticipated bringing the steam plant back on line after it had been out of operation for more than a month. However to date this has not come to fruition. The company had recently purchased a new motor and over the last three days, had been working on modifying its lubrication system. Other information indicated that the recently purchased motor is too small and came with a pivotal part missing. The LPC boss Steve Bovell could not be reached for clarification on this. The other two pumps and three motors belonging to LPC that have been out of operation continue to be defective.
Chief Executive Officer of Linmine, Horace James, told Stabroek News that the company's bauxite plant was not being affected.
Omai is expected to ship three diesel sets to Linden by the end of July as part of its investment in Linmine although this is not yet a done deal. The three sets would have the capacity to generate 9MW of electricity.
