PROV­I­DENCE – The Guyana Pow­er and Light Com­pa­ny Inc (GPL) and the Min­istry of Cul­ture, Youth and Sport have dis­tanced them­selves from the em­bar­rass­ing pow­er out­age which sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed the Caribbean Pre­mier League play­off con­test be­tween the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers and Bar­ba­dos Roy­als in Guyana on Mon­day night.

Faulty flood­lights re­sult­ed in the match be­ing de­layed by over two hours with the Roy­als even­tu­al­ly win­ning by nine wick­ets af­ter their in­nings was re­duced to five overs.

Fol­low­ing the pow­er out­age at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, the GPL made it clear that the Sta­di­um is pow­ered by in­de­pen­dent gen­er­at­ing sets and that GPL’s tech­ni­cians were on­ly on stand­by to as­sist with any is­sue.

In a late-night joint state­ment, the Min­istry of Cul­ture, Youth and Sport and the GPL ex­plained that three of the six flood­lights at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um lost pow­er dur­ing the crick­et match.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, all CPL match­es at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um are pow­ered from in­de­pen­dent gen­er­at­ing sets lo­cat­ed in the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um and not by the GPL grid.

GPL said it has been on stand­by at all match­es to ren­der tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to the Sta­di­um at all times.

It was ex­plained that when the flood­lights went down, the GPL tech­ni­cal team on stand­by im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan ren­der­ing as­sis­tance and re­stored pow­er to two of three flood­lights on the same cir­cuit.

The joint state­ment said the Sta­di­um’s tech­ni­cal staff and GPL worked as­sid­u­ous­ly to re­store pow­er to the third flood­light which had a tech­ni­cal fault with the un­der­ground ca­ble feed­ing pow­er to that flood­light.

A sub­sti­tute ca­ble was in­stalled to have the flood­light op­er­a­tional and that was achieved just be­fore 11 p.m.

The Sport Min­istry and GPL have now promised that ad­di­tion­al tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment will be done im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the game to avoid any re­oc­cur­rence.

There were two sim­i­lar in­ci­dents in­volv­ing the same flood lights at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um re­cent­ly.

One of those in­ci­dents took place dur­ing the fi­nals of a T10 tour­na­ment and the oth­er in­ci­dent took place dur­ing a prac­tice ses­sion of the Ama­zon War­riors crick­et team.

Ear­li­er this week, the Ma­chin­ery Cor­po­ra­tion of Guyana Lim­it­ed, (MA­CORP) an­nounced its role in pow­er­ing the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um for the CPL play­offs and fi­nal games.

In a state­ment is­sued pri­or to Mon­day’s match, MA­CORP said its “CAT XQC M1600 Mod­ule cut­ting-edge pow­er so­lu­tion is fu­el­ing en­er­gy both on and off the field, en­sur­ing un­in­ter­rupt­ed elec­tric­i­ty and pow­er­ful per­for­mance.

“With its pow­er­ful ca­pa­bil­i­ties and adapt­able fea­tures, the XQC1600 guar­an­tees re­li­able pow­er for the sta­di­um, help­ing to main­tain the elec­tri­fy­ing at­mos­phere of the CPL – fa­mous­ly known as “the biggest par­ty in sports.”

Among some of its fea­tures in­clud­ed sound-at­ten­u­at­ed de­sign, dual fre­quen­cy ca­pa­bil­i­ty, grid syn­chro­niza­tion, an im­pres­sive pow­er ca­pac­i­ty, am­ple fu­el sup­ply, and cus­tomiz­able cir­cuit pro­tec­tion.

(CMC)