“Testing carried out with potential short breaks”
The report is, “how encouraging it must be for electricity consumers,” when Montserrat Utilities Ltd. (MUL) on Tuesday reported that power has been restored island wide with the introduction of the new power station generator set on to the grid in a testing phase. MUL’s Managing Director David Thompson said then, barring two short interruptions, the new generator will then be tested for a one week period carrying the base load at the plant.
Following the upbeat though cautious promise of the Montserrat Utilities Ltd. Manager, David Thompson on Friday last week, the week began on Monday with more electricity power outages and new load shedding schedules.
Thompson told ZJB News, “We failed to find an alternative option to provide extra electricity so we are gonna have to rotate back give power to the south and remove power from the north at 6 and work through the night to provide electricity. The Manager says he knows how frustrating that can be trying to carry on a normal life,” as he himself has suffered from the experience having to be without power.
But, in 24 hours came the good news about the power being restored island wide even though there was the risk of short interruptions, the Manager being as cautious as he has come to prove he must be. In the meantime the situation exposed the weaknesses that have bugged the usually reliable ‘Monlec’ now under the merged company MUL, for the past three years when it had been anticipated, the new plant would be installed; and even the probability of geothermal power all this time.
Thompson explained: “That situation should stay surely until about midnight we’re hoping.”
He explained further: ”Between midnight and eight o’clock sometime during that time we may either have to load shed because the new generator has to come off and we have further test – or we need to put some coolant in one of the radiators.”
He said, “One of the engines has being running non-stop for a while if we have to load shed tonight it might only be for an hour or two or it might be for three or four hours because we don’t know what the situation is till we get there.”
He ended still hopeful, “Tomorrow we hope to introduce again the new generator back in a testing mode and we will see and learn how we go from there and there’ll be further updates tomorrow.”
So far the situation has held with the Minister of Communication and Works meantime giving a full update to the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, as he looked at the immediate solution in addition to the repairs being undertaken on the temporary generators.
The Minister reported the situate as above as he detailed the week from Monday this week, expecting that the majority of the repaired parts for one of the functioning generators “have now arrived island and repair works on this engine is expected to commence today.”
He detailed further: “The new 1.5 megawatt generator as part of the new power station project has been tested and commissioned,” confirming the Managers reports.
He said efforts were made to synchronize the new generator into the grid, and that during “those three-hour testing period the new generator was able to carry the load of up to 1.2 megawatts.”
“The next steps in the process of integrating the new 1.5 megawatt engine,” he said, “is to undertake the reliability trials and performance tests of the engine,” which he says involves the reliability trials -operating the engine on the commercial load non-stop for a week. “Uupon successful completion of the reliability trials the engine will remain on the grid and the performance test will then start. “
