Guyana Power and Light (GPL) is a publicly owned

utility company A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and r ...

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

, providing

electric power Electric power is the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt, one joule per second. Standard prefixes apply to watts as with other SI units: thousands, millions and billions o ...

in the country. Domestic voltage can be 110 or 220 depending on the area, both 50 and 60 cycle power. Services are provided from

Charity Charity may refer to: Giving * Charitable organization or charity, a non-profit organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being of persons * Charity (practice), the practice of being benevolent, giving and sharing * Ch ...

Moleson Creek Moleson Creek is a community on the Corentyne River in the East Berbice-Corentyne region of Guyana, and home to the Guyana-Suriname ferry stelling. It is north of Orealla Mission, south of Corriverton, and approximately from New Amsterdam. Mo ...

, including the islands of Leguan and

Wakenaam Wakenaam is an island of about at the mouth of the Essequibo River of Guyana. One of the largest islands (the others being Leguan and Hogg Island) in the Essequibo Islands group, it was settled at one time by the Dutch in the 18th Century; the ...

in the

Essequibo River The Essequibo River (Spanish: ''Río Esequibo'' originally called by Alonso de Ojeda ''Río Dulce'') is the largest river in Guyana, and the largest river between the Orinoco and Amazon. Rising in the Acarai Mountains near the Brazil–Guyana bor ...

. GPL has power stations at

Sophia, Georgetown Sophia is a ward of Georgetown, the capital of Guyana. It's a predominantly Afro-Guyanese community, and one of Georgetown's poorest neighborhoods. Sophia was where Forbes Burnham presented "Declaration of Sophia" at a People's National Congre ...

, in Onverwagt (West

Berbice Berbice is a region along the Berbice River in Guyana, which was between 1627 and 1792 a colony of the Dutch West India Company and between 1792 to 1815 a colony of the Dutch state. After having been ceded to the United Kingdom of Great Britain ...

) as well as facilities in

Bartica Bartica, Essequibo, is a town on the left bank of the Essequibo River in Cuyuni-Mazaruni (Region 7), at the confluence of the Cuyuni and Mazaruni Rivers with the Essequibo River in Guyana. It is the regional capital of Cuyuni-Mazaruni. Considere ...

Anna Regina Anna Regina is the capital of the Pomeroon-Supenaam Region of Guyana. Anna Regina stands on the Atlantic coast, northwest of the mouth of the Essequibo River, 19 km north of Adventure, and was established as a town in 1970. Its population w ...

, and Fairfield.

History

Before the turn of the twentieth century, power was provided by private entities, particularly in Georgetown and

New Amsterdam, Guyana New Amsterdam ( nl, Nieuw Amsterdam) is the regional capital of East Berbice-Corentyne, Guyana and one of the country's largest towns. It is from the capital, Georgetown and located on the eastern bank of the Berbice River, upriver from its ...

Mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

areas of Linden and Everton (upper Berbice) received power from

Alcan Alcan was a Canadian mining company and aluminum manufacturer. It was founded in 1902 as the Northern Aluminum Company, renamed Aluminum Company of Canada in 1925, and Alcan Aluminum in 1966. It took the name Alcan Incorporated in 2001. During t ...

and

Reynolds Group Holdings Reynolds Group Holdings is a New Zealand based packaging company with roots in the former Reynolds Metals Company, which was the second-largest aluminum company in the United States, and the third-largest in the world. Reynolds Metals was acquire ...

, mainly for their Mackenzie ( Linden) and Berbice-based

bauxite Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(O ...

operations. The International Power Company of Canada was in operation in Georgetown at the turn of the twentieth century. The Demerara Electric Company was established in 1925 when it purchased the assets of IPC. The British Guiana Electricity Company (BGEC) came into being in 1957, and in 1960 it purchased the assets of the Demerara Electric Company. After Independence in May 1966, the BGEC was

nationalized Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...

and the Guyana Electricity Company (GEC) was established. By 1991, the facilities had deteriorated and the capacity of 253 megawatts of electricity and generated 647 gigawatt-hours of electricity only satisfied half the estimated demand. Blackouts were common. Thirty three years later, the Government of Guyana divested 50 percent of its ownership and control to a UK-based

consortium A consortium (plural: consortia) is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for ...

comprising the Electricity Supply Board International and the

Commonwealth Development Corporation British International Investment, (formerly CDC Group plc, Commonwealth Development Corporation, and Colonial Development Corporation) is the development finance institution of the UK government. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office ...

. The

divestiture In finance and economics, divestment or divestiture is the reduction of some kind of asset for financial, ethical, or political objectives or sale of an existing business by a firm. A divestment is the opposite of an investment. Divestiture is a ...

failed and the company once again became wholly owned by the state on 1 May 2003. The failure of GPL to significantly cut back its technical and commercial losses has been deemed to be largely due to the lack of incentives for efficiency due to its ownership structure. Accordingly, its privatization was expected to generate commercial incentives to improve efficiency, while also enhancing private funding to develop the system. However the privatized venture failed to deliver the results expected and, after a few years returned to Government ownership. A future re-privatization of GPL is unlikely to occur before the regulatory and institutional framework of the sector is improved. Generator maintenance was contracted out to

Wärtsilä Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (), trading internationally as Wärtsilä Corporation, is a Finnish company which manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets. The core products of Wärtsilä include technol ...

until 2018 when the role was handed over to Power Producers and Distribution Inc.

References

{{Guyana topics Electric power companies of Guyana