Two engines at Anna Regina Power Plant down for overhaul

Jun 11, 2021 News

– One operational with backup sets

The three engines.

The backup generators.

Kaieteur News – The Anna Regina Power Plant, which was recently commissioned back in 2019, will continue to run the backup Caterpillar sets, for the coming months. Based on initial reports reaching Kaieteur News, two of the power station’s three engines are offline for overhaul. Additional information indicated that the engines – Units One and Two – have been offline for over a month.
These reports were later confirmed by a senior engineer attached to the State-owned power company. That engineer, who opted to remain anonymous, told this publication that GPL’s mechanics are partnering with mechanics from the Power Producers and Distributors Inc. (PPDI), in an effort to have the two engines up and running.
The engineer told Kaieteur News that the engines were taken offline for major mechanical overhaul, which was delayed due to COVID-19. He went on to say, “Presently we have mechanics working on the engines and by this Friday, one of the units, Unit One, should be brought up online. Like I said, the engines are long overdue for an overhaul, the overhaul should’ve started in March. Due to COVID-19 though we had some issues shipping in the spares because the engines are manufactured by a [German company] MAN, spares had to be shipped from Germany and so.”
The Anna Regina Power Station was commissioned in 2019. The station’s three MAN diesel and turbo engines were supplied and installed by Turkish company “iLTEKNO.” The three engines, when combined, have a total generating capacity of 5.4 megawatts.
Kaieteur News understands that complete overhaul of all three units will reportedly be concluded by September this year. The engineer, who spoke to Kaieteur News, said that this would not interrupt the provision of power on the Essequibo Coast, as several Caterpillar sets are being utilised.
“We expect to finish all engines by September,” he said, “but this doesn’t affect our readiness to supply power, though these two engines are presently out. We have 8.4 megawatts ready to supply, and our demand is 5.8. And we are making arrangements to have a new unit.”
During the course of 2017 and 2018, residents on the Essequibo Coast had suffered tremendously from continuous blackouts. When the twenty-year-old Wartsila engines outlived their life spans, Caterpillar backup sets were acquired for emergency power generation. After continuous pressure, quite a few of the Caterpillar sets eventually suffered mechanical problems, and before long, the Region was back to its blackout woe, until the commissioning of the Power Plant in April 2019.

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