Had the river fairy fallen asleep? The communities on the coast of Guyana were without power for several hours overnight from Monday to Tuesday, the prefecture said on Tuesday, while EDF is looking for the cause of the outage.
“An interruption in high-voltage power this morning caused a power outage in Guyana, which is mostly coastal,” the prefect said during a news briefing Tuesday morning. The majority of the almost 300,000 Guyanese live on the coast.
Ongoing investigations
By mid-morning, electricity had been restored to all homes, according to EDF, which explains in a press release that the disruption “follows the safeguarding of the two high-voltage lines connected to the Petit-Saut hydroelectric power station”.
“The origin of the security of the two lines is being investigated,” assures EDF. “The most sensitive points of consumption with emergency capacities are not affected, in particular hospitals, the airport or the port,” specified the prefect.
The Ministries for the Energy Transition and France Overseas wanted to take this opportunity to recall “the government’s support for the EDF power plant project called Larivot”, which they consider “essential for the security of electricity supply in French Guiana, given the aging of the existing ones is thermal power station Dégrad-des-Cannes”.
In mid-July, the Administrative Court of Guyana annulled the building permit granted by EDF in 2020 for the construction of a sea-side power plant in Larivot, near Cayenne, a new episode in the intense legal battle being waged over the project that the ecologists and EDF tears up, backed by government.