President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali has described the recent frequency of electricity disruptions in Guyana as unacceptable, while emphasising that the country’s rapidly expanding economy is placing unprecedented demands on the national power system.
Addressing reporters at a press conference on Monday, President Ali highlighted findings from a recent InterEnergy assessment commissioned to examine the country’s electricity infrastructure and its ability to meet rising demand.
According to the assessment, peak electricity consumption on the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS) rose from approximately 205 megawatts in 2024 to 242.6 megawatts by August 2026. This increase of about 18 per cent is significantly higher than the roughly 3–4 per cent average annual growth recorded across power systems in Latin America and the Caribbean.
President Ali said the rapid rise in demand has exposed weaknesses in the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) network, particularly its limited capacity to handle maintenance or unexpected equipment failures without causing widespread interruptions.
He said the system remains vulnerable because it lacks sufficient spare capacity to take generating units offline safely.
“If anything goes wrong there, the entire system shuts down,” the President said, emphasising that such vulnerability is inconsistent with the pace at which Guyana’s economy is expanding.
The rising cost of fuel has added another layer of pressure. President Ali said refined gasoline imports have increased by 51 per cent since January, while diesel costs have risen by 86.8 per cent. He noted these increases have not been passed on to electricity consumers, with the government instead providing substantial additional subsidies to GPL.
While acknowledging the current situation is difficult, President Ali maintained that persistent outages cannot become a feature of Guyana’s rapidly developing economy.
He said the country must move away from an electricity system that relies heavily on manual intervention and slow fault responses.
The President emphasised the need for a more automated and responsive grid, arguing that modern electricity infrastructure should detect problems and respond quickly, rather than relying on crews travelling to locations to identify and address basic faults.
President Ali also acknowledged that modernising the power sector will require significant financial resources, but added that such investment is necessary if Guyana is to support continued economic expansion.
The InterEnergy assessment projects that national electricity demand could rise by about 138 per cent by 2029. At the same time, GPL is expected to connect more than 62,000 additional customers as residential developments, commercial activity, hotels and industrial projects expand.
The projected growth means that Guyana will need a substantial increase in generation capacity, while also strengthening the infrastructure for transmitting and distributing electricity.
InterEnergy has therefore recommended a broad-based investment programme covering generation, transmission and distribution, rather than addressing individual weaknesses through isolated projects.
President Ali described the ongoing transformation of the electricity sector as the most extensive modernisation of Guyana’s power system to date.
Among the initiatives already underway are expanding generation via the gas-to-energy programme, diversifying the country’s fuel sources, and constructing more than 360 kilometres of high-voltage transmission infrastructure.
The modernisation programme also includes new and upgraded substations, smart meters, advanced grid-control technologies, and battery energy-storage systems to improve system stability and reliability.
Despite the scale of these investments, President Ali said that implementation must accelerate and be better coordinated to ensure Guyana can provide the reliable electricity supply required to sustain its economic growth.
The President’s comments underscore the growing challenge facing the country’s power sector: electricity demand is rising at a pace that is putting existing infrastructure under increasing strain, making the rapid expansion and modernisation of the national grid a critical priority.