Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Coal vs Solar

Sometimes only a picture will do the job:

This is a satellite view of the AES coal and solar facilities in Guayama Puerto Rico. Other than caption and outlines, it is unretouched.

The solar plant is rated at 20MW but that means 20MW for the few minutes per day when the sun is in the optimal position. The rest of the day it is less, especially on cloudy days. At night, of course, it is zero. Actual average output, calculated from the amount of energy sold by AES to PREPA over several years, is between 4 and 5MW. This power is non-dispatchable and somewhat random as well.

Batteries will eventually help smooth out the randomness and bring some degree of dispatchability. That will add to the usability but will not do anything to significantly increase the total power generated. 

The coal plant, on the other hand is rated at 454MW. That means it can run for extended periods of time, if needed at 454MW subject only to fuel availability. They keep 60-90 days supply on hand.

Eyeballing the two, it looks like the coal plant, with 100 times the capacity, occupies about the same amount of land as the solar plant.

Our very own Prince of Darkness has decreed that we will eventually have 25% of our total power. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

By way of comparison, this is what a 4MW, truck mountable, diesel generator looks like:





Friday, December 22, 2017

Map showing Puerto Rico generation and transmission resources

This map is extracted from the working group's damage assessment report linked earlier.

There are 1,775MW of theoretical capacity located north of the central cordillera/mountains counting the Daguao (Ceiba) and Yabucoa (Humacao) plants

It is theoretical since much of it is out of service for reasons not really related to the hurricane Maria.







Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Wishing everyone a bright, bright, Christmas of green


Month 4

Today we enter the 4th month without electricity in my neighborhood.

Every time I start to feel sorry for myself, I think of others that not only have no light but no water, no work and in some cases no home.

A huge thank you to all of those folks from the military, fuel delivery services, electric companies and others who are spending Christmas away from home to help us get back to some semblance of normalcy.

And a special thanks to the US taxpayers who are footing the bill. 

Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, let us count our many blessings.

Blowing smoke, not wind

Puerto Rico govt has a goal of 25% wind and solar power. I have some thoughts about solar but wind seems to be a misguided effort. 

We hear how the wind blows all the time here. Soft Caribbean breezes and all that. And, of course, the occasional hurricane. What we do not seem to have is good wind energy sites. 

This is a map showing wind energy in Puerto Rico at 50 meters elevation. It was done by Dept of Energy and available at several sites on the web.

The key thing to notice is that of PR is colored white. The legend tells us that White means 5-9 meters/second windspeed and is rated "Poor" There are some beige areas offshore rated "marginal"

In a press release from Gestamp, who developed the now defunct (temporarily? Permanently?) Naguabo wind farm, they take issue with the poor rating saying that at 75 meters, the height of their towers, the wind speed is marginal. True, but just barely.
So how much energy did the Naguabo windfarm generate? You can download a report of month by month electricity sales to PREPA for all non-PREPA suppliers such as Naguabo. 

https://aeepr.com/Documentos/Ley57/Tablas%20Compra%20de%20Energ%C3%ADa.pdf


I ran their numbers through a spreadsheet and find that they generated on average a tad less than 53,000MWH/yr with an average output of about 6MW or a shade more than 25% of nameplate capacity.

 Doesn't seem like a lot of power for such a massive, unsightly, expensive investment. Not to mention non-dispatchable and inconsistent.

 Their contract, available here shows PREPA paying 12 cents/kwh (Years 1-5) decreasing in steps to 9 cents in years 16-20.

https://aeepr.com/Documentos/Ley57/CONTRATOS/Contrato%20Solar%20Project%20Ponce%20(Fonroche%20Naguabo)%202013-P00045.pdf

 

Should PR really be thinking of windpower?

Friday, December 15, 2017

Residential solar system cost

I ran across an interesting brochure from greensolarpr.com on how to tell whether solar is right for you. It includes how to calculate size and gives some average costs. The assumption is that it will be tied into PREPA. If not tied to PREPA, there may be some hardware savings offset by the need to have batteries.

I thought this was the key paragraph:


Residential Grid
-
Tie systems can start as low as $2000 (installed) for a starter system, all the way to $50,000 or more.


Average Component Cost:
$5 per watt. This includes all the components including panels, inverters, mountings and electrical accessories.
 

Add $2 per watt for battery backup systems.
 

Average Installation Cost:
 

$2 per watt. This usually includes the physical installation of the system and connection to the grid.
 

Example:
 

For  the  example  above  4.52 kW Grid  Tie system cost  is  near  $22,600  and  $9,041  for installation  cost  including  design  and  permitting  for  a  total  of  $31,645.    Adding  a  battery backup system for emergency power can add additional $9,041 to your system for a total of $40.687.
 

Your system total price can vary as little as 10% more and as 20% less depending on various factors such as design, PV shadow, type of PV and price negotiations.  Therefore your system estimated range is 25,316 to $34,810 for Grid Tie PV Direct and $32,549 to $44,755 for a Grid Tie with battery backup.

[Emphasis added]

http://greensolarpr.com/pdf/How to Calculate your Solar PV System.pdf 


This is a system for a home using 600KWH/month. If we assume 25cents/kwh, the annual cost of purchased (PREPA) power in this example is $150 per month or $1,800/yr.

If we use the lowest number in the installation range (because everything always comes it at low range, right?) we can call it $25,000

We will assume that once the system is installed, all electricity in the household will be free. There will be some maintenance costs over the life of the system but they are probably going to be minor. As long as we don't get another Maria, or Georges, or Hugo etc. so let's set them aside. 

Simple payback method divides the total cash outflow by total cash inflow:

25,000/1,800 gives us a payback of just under 14 years. If it is the high end of the range, it is $45,000/1800 or 25 years.

The calculator does mention rebates and, though not mentioned, there may be tax deductions or credits. This will bring the cost of the system, to the homeowner, down and maybe make it attractive. Unfortunately, it doesn't really bring the cost down. It merely shifts the cost from the homeowner to other homeowners/taxpayers, to PREPA, to other PREPA customers and to others. 

Doesn't seem right for neighbors to be taking from their neighbors.

Don't get me wrong, I have been interested in traditional and alternative energy  since the 60's. I studied nuclear power in the 60's, learned about OTEC in Dr Werner's oceanography classes in 1973 at IAU. In 1975 I sold solar water heaters in Puerto Rico.

If solar electric made economic sense, or perhaps I should say when solar makes economic sense, there will be no bigger fanboy than me. We are getting closer and closer to that point but we still have a ways to go.  

Battery technology is needed to make it feasible and there are some amazing things going on with large scale batteries. We are not there yet, either.


"Puerto Rico Reconstruction: Lowering Electricity Costs Requires Big Changes" By Kerinia Cusick

It's a a month and a half old but I just ran across it the other day. Excellent article and needs to be read by everyone with an interest in PR's energy situation.


Puerto Rico Reconstruction: Lowering Electricity Costs Requires Big Changes

    By Kerinia Cusick, www.linkedin.com
   
    October 27th, 2017

Puerto Rico holds a special place in my heart. My husband was born there, we have family there, and I’ve spent idyllic vacations on all three of its main islands. I also spent two years in the trenches trying to get solar built on the island, only to be frustrated at every turn. ...

Read the whole thing here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/puerto-rico-reconstruction-lowering-electricity-costs-kerinia-cusick/

La Verdad sobre la situacion Energetica en PR

Robert Garcia-Cooper wrote an excellent report about PREPA a few years ago. I found it on the web while looking for something else and am glad I did. It is a public document and he has granted permission to publish it here. It is in Spanish:

La-Verdad-Sobre-La-Situacion-Energetica-en-Puerto-Rico-Estudio-independiente-realizado-por-Robert-Garcia-Cooper.pdf



At 56 pages, it has a lot of information about PREPA. Robert put a lot of work into it and it shows.

Thanks, Robert.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Sometimes crying is not enough...

My son and I were riding around today and passed by the generation plant in Mayaguez. These look good and were running. (4 gas turbines totaling 220MW)

So we were talking about electricity and I told him a story I had heard in the early 80s from an engineer whose company had been involved. 

During the great NY Power outage of 1977, at a steam generating plant on Long Island, one of the large steam turbines lost lube oil circulation. The pump depended on utility power to run and when the lights went out, there was no backup. The rotating inertia was such that even though the bearings failed, it continued grinding away for hours. Total damage was multiple millions of dollars and several months of lost capacity. The engineer who told me the story had been involved in designing a backup power system to run auxiliaries. After the failure.

My son told me, "Well, at least a lesson was learned and I'll bet it doesn't happen again." I agreed and said I hoped so. 

We got to the hotel and I started reading the damage assessment in the PRERWG report. I ran across this about the San Juan plant:

"Battery chargers are not in service and with a loss of AC power, can result in severe damage to equipment. 

One significant issue with the loss of the battery is the failure of the lube oil system to operate and cause damage to the steam turbine bearings."

I want to cry but I am all cried out. 

PR Electric Recovery Working Group report

Yesterday a report, prepared by a number of US utilities plus PREPA, was issued titled build Back Better: Reimagining and Strengthening the Power Grid of Puerto Rico. The report was prepared for Gov. Cuomo of NY and Gov Rossello of Puerto Rico

It can be downloaded at https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/governor.ny.gov/files/atoms/files/PRERWG_Report_PR_Grid_Resiliency_Report.pdf

I just started looking at it tonight and jumped ahead to appendix A which is a plant by plant damage assessment of all the PREPA generators including the various smaller units like Ceiba, Vega Baja, Yabucoa (which I had thought was in Humacao) as well as all the big plants.

Just skipping through the TOC and a few pages at random, it looks interesting.  The damage assessment certainly is.

I'll have more to say once I've read the whole thing.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

AES and battery power (II)

AES also sent me some links to their site for more info on utility scale batteries. Very interesting as well. 

http://aesenergystorage.com/

I downloaded a white paper there that seems to contain a lot of detail about the benefits of utility scale batteries. I've not read it yet and will probably have some comments in a couple days.

AES and battery power

El Nueva Dia had an article yesterday about a report on battery power for PREPA.
As usual for the, the info was not particularly useful. Why can't they find writers that understand a bit about technology. But that is another discussion.

The article is here
https://www.elnuevodia.com/negocios/economia/nota/aesproponeunanuevaredelectrica-2381226/

It basically said that AES, who we know for the clean coal plant in Guayama, wants to install utility scale (multi-megawatt) batteries in PR. These would be used in conjunction with solar panels, though that was not clear in the ND article. Sounds like a good idea and I wanted to know more.

I contacted AES press office to request a copy of the report. They  replied within an hour with a link to the report and links to additional information.

The report can be downloaded here: http://energia.pr.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IN20170002A30-COMENTARIOS-AES.pdf

I read through it last night and it had some very interesting and useful information on micro and mini-grids and how they might be implemented in Puerto Rico. One of the major problems with solar and wind is that it is inconsistent. In the case of solar it is only available about 8 hours a day (average over the year). If it is ever going to be useful, some sort of storage is needed. Batteries look like the main technology at the moment, though there are some other options.

I had always assumed that batteries would be sized so that they could be charged during the day (or when the wind is blowing in the case of windmills) and then have enough capacity to cover the downtime.

Reading the AES report, it seems that this is not the strategy. AES proposes that batteries be sized for about 5 hours. They would be charged up during the day then discharged to cover peak demands in the evenings. This is pretty beneficial in itself because it adds stability to the power system, allows matching of generation during the day with consumption in the evening and some other factors detailed in the report.

It is a useful addition to the grid but does not replace the need for baseload generation by fossil fuel (coal, gas, oil), nuclear or some other large scale generation. It will replace peaking systems such as gas turbines but not the central plants.

The report has limited information about the economics of the system. I am wondering if, considering the cost of batteries, controls, solar panels, windmills and so on the system makes economic sense on its own. It may make economic sense only due to tax credits, deductions, subsidies, preferential buyback pricing (eg; net metering).

It may, but I could not tell from the report.

AES is to be congratulated for a very interesting proposal and if anyone can make the concept work, I would think they can.

I strongly recommend that anyone interested in Puerto Rico's energy future read the report.

Vega Baja GT generators offline (50MW)

Per Status.pr , as of December 11, PREPA is at only 63.7% of generation. 

I was in Vega Baja yesterday and made a point of driving past the 2 gas turbine generators. These are located on the south side of highway 3 near the center of town.

Neither was running. That is 50MW total capacity of generation that is not being used.

I have no idea whether this is because they inoperable, like Ceiba and Humacao were for a long time or because their power can't be used. 

Anyone know?


Saturday, December 9, 2017

Alcon v PREPA

Alcon was a pharmaceutical company located in Humacao PR (in back of Sam's Club). In the 80's PREPA power was very unreliable and they negotiated a contract with O'Brien Energy to build and operate a 2 MW (electric) cogeneration plant to supply power and chilled water for Alcon's manufacturing and support operations. 

It was a beautiful contract. O'Brien provided everything but the site. They built the plant and operated it, including fuel and maintenance, under a lease charging 75% of whatever the PREPA equivalent charges would be each month. 

It was a beautiful project from an engineering standpoint too. Fairbanks-Morse diesel with a Hitachi chiller running off the exhaust and radiator heat.  

PREPA claimed O'Brien was a utility and was barred from doing this. 

The case was ultimately decided in Alcon's and O'Brien's favor but by then it was too late. 

Not too late for someone who wants to get into the cogeneration business today, though. The decision would seem (get good legal advice before acting) to allow someone to set up a cogeneration plant in a shopping center, commercial building, hospital, manufacturing plant or wherever and sell the output directly to the users without going through PREPA.

The decision is 


848 F.2d 243
270 U.S.App.D.C. 186
PUERTO RICO ELECTRIC POWER AUTHORITY, Petitioner,
v.
FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION, Respondent,
American Paper Institute, Inc., American Gas Association,
Cogeneration Coalition of America, Inc., Brooklyn Union Gas
Co., Electricity Consumers Resources Council, Alcon, Inc.,
Energy Michigan, Inc., Intervenors.
No. 87-1219.
United States Court of Appeals,
District of Columbia Circuit.
Argued Feb. 18, 1988.
Decided June 3, 1988.

Here's a link:

Cogeneration & Decentralized energy




One thing Hurricane Maria has taught us is what a hollow shell PREPA is. The thousand plus megawatts of generation (Palo Seco plus San Juan plus various gas turbines) should supply the metro area. An almost criminal lack of maintenance makes those plants unavailable. A million people sit in the dark because of this neglect.

It is time to take some eggs out of the PREPA basket. We don’t need a few big plants located far from the point of use. We need hundreds or thousands of small plants generating electricity where it’s needed.


It’s time for massive cogeneration.


Any generator plant, whether a large plant like Aguirre or a 5 KW home plant, converts about 30-40% of the energy input to electricity out. The rest is wasted mainly in the exhaust and, in the case of a gasoline or diesel plant, the radiator.


A cogeneration plant generates electricity normally but captures the waste heat and puts it to use. It can make steam or hot water if needed. More usefully in Puerto Rico, the waste heat can power an absorption chiller (Wikipedia can explain) to make chilled water for air conditioning. Cogeneration plants operate at 60 to 70% efficiency or more. The high efficiency makes even small, 50KW+ cogeneration plants technically and economically feasible.


Cogeneration efficiency is also boosted by the lack of transformers. Transmission distances, and losses, are measured in feet rather than miles.


Even better, they help the environment. They do this by using a higher quality fuel, diesel instead of bunker C or coal. Higher efficiencies mean they use less of it. A double win.

In Puerto Rico we’ve rightly learned not to trust PREPA. That’s why so many businesses and restaurants have standby generators. Many could be converted to cogeneration turning the generator from a cost to a profit.


Cogenerators still need to be connected to PREPA for backup power when their plant is shut down for maintenance or fails. This works both ways and can benefit both cogenerator and PREPA.


My favorite restaurant, Lolita’s in Fajardo, has a 150KW standby generator to allow normal operation during power outages. If they used the waste heat for air conditioning, they may only need 100KW for the rest of the business.


That gives them 50KW they could sell back to PREPA. That adds 50KW of reliable power to PREPA’s capacity. Modern dispatching technology takes care of power flows in both directions depending on whether the restaurant or PREPA needs it at a given moment. 

Many small distributed plants will be more reliable in aggregate than a few massive central plants.


Cogeneration is a proven technology that has been in wide use for more than a century. 

PREPA has resisted it in the past. They need to be brought into the 21st century.

Maybe it’s time for President Bush’s “Thousand points of light” in Puerto Rico.


Thursday, December 7, 2017

Pier 4 generator depot update

Update on the generators: I was in SJ today (12/7) and drove by Pier 4. All the generators I mentioned in the previous post?

Still there. I am assuming the same ones, if they are actually cycling out and new ones are coming in, someone let me know. I'll publish a correction.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, como se dice en mi barrio, there are still a lot of people without lights or water (Me too). El Vocero had this story today:

Protestan por la falta de luz y recogido de escombros


Residentes de las comunidades de University Gardens y Jardines Metropolitanos, realizan una manifestación en estos momentos en la calle Notre Dame en San Juan, exigiendo acción de la administración municipal por la falta de recogido de escombros y en repudio a la falsa promesa de la Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica.
Los residentes están ubicados cerca del puente de la calle Notre Dame, entre University Gardens y Jardines Metropolitanos.

EL VOCERO supo que muchos residentes no tienen luz desde el huracán Irma el pasado 6 de septiembre. Hoy se cumplen tres meses del paso del fenómeno atmosférico. [Emph added]

...

Read the whole thing


http://www.elvocero.com/gobierno/protestan-por-la-falta-de-luz-y-recogido-de-escombros/article_7e8a6e9c-dac8-11e7-9947-73ec5a75f3fc.html


Windmills and drone footage


I was in Santa Isabel yesterday and none of the wind turbines was
operating. I did not see any apparent damage and wondered why. Poking
around the net I found a statement from the owners that the hurricane
had caused no damage to the windmills but they were unable to connect to
PREPA due to the damaged transmission lines. The statement was from
October and here we are in December with them still, apparently,
offline.



I also found an interesting 11 minute video on
the hurricane from the National Weather Service. It is drone footage of
damage. Perhaps the best I've seen so far.



Of
particular interest here is overhead views of the Naguabo windfarm
showing all windmills with broken blades and of the Humacao solar farm.



Naguabo is at 2:01 into the video, Humacao at 4:28





https://youtu.be/xFCwFZtaQHE

Naguabo windmill damage

All 13 of the windmills at the Naguabo wind farm have at least 1, and many all 3, broken blades.





https://www.wind-watch.org/pix/displayimage.php?pid=855&fullsize=1


A good engineer would design with this possibility in mind. Blades would be designed to break away with minimal damage to the head and gearing. I looked on the manufacturer's site to see if this was the case with these. I found nothing.

Does anyone have any knowledge of this? Either specific to the Naguabo site or in general?

Replacing the blades seems relatively inexpensive, at least compared to the cost of replacing the whole mechanism.

It might mean the difference between restoration and abandonment.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Palo Seco generator report (colegio de ingengieros)

One of the big problems in PR is that the Palo Seco steam plant @600MW as well as 3 of its 6 gas turbines (66mw of132 total) is offline.

Why is it offline?

Because of an almost criminal lack of structural and mechanical maintenance.

A number of areas are so poorly maintained that the are in danger of collapse from their own weight.

This report of an October inspection by a team of structural engineers from the Colegio de Ingengieros will make your hair stand on end.

It includes a report, with pictures, by a NY consulting firm wo did inspections on multiple visits between 2011 and 2017

Here's the link. It is in English and Spanish



http://www.ciapr.net/images/stories/Informe_Palo_Seco/Informe%20Comisi%C3%B3n%20Especial%20Palo%20Seco.pdf

Sunday, December 3, 2017

What are these generators for?




Coming back from a cruise 11/25 I noticed a bunch of generators on pier 14.see pic above. I counted about 50 that  I could see. 

Yesterday  12/2 I was in sj and drove onto pier 4. My count was low. There were probably 100 or more. Most looked to be in the 200-400 kw range with a few that might be 6-700kw and several flatbeds trailers with multiple smaller units 20-50kw?

There is a large warehouse I did not enter. Looking in the loading dock doors, there might be another50-100 jennys inside too. 

Anyone know what these are for or where they are from? 

Email darkislandpr@gmail.com 

My policy is that all info received is anonymous unless specifically advised otherwise 


PR press keeping us informed (just kidding)

I had understood that with the cancelation of the Whitefish contract Heart and their other subcontractors were to leave Puerto Rico on 11/30.

Friday I was in line with someone from heart and asked about this. He told me that Heart and some (all?) had been contracted for another 90 days by Fluor.

That's great news and i told him so.

Why were we not told? A search of El Vocero, Caribbean Business  and  Nueva Dia for Fluor turned up nothing at all about this.

Saturday Vocero did publish an article about Fluor getting an $864mm contract from the corps of engineers so at least the sort of got it eventually.

Thanks, "news"papers

A search of Caribbeanbusiness.com for Fluor did turn up news of an open house.

Held the day before. Thanks for the news. Here's a pro t, CB, you are supposed to publish these announcements before, not after, they happen.

(that's the sound of one hand clapping)

Friday, December 1, 2017

Senatorial rocket scientists/abusers

Sometimes I just feel like crying.

I found this in El Vocero today thought it appeared on the 29th. One of our rocket scientists in the Puerto Rico Senate wants to ban the use of residential and other generators.

Now normally I would think this is not a bad idea to keep noise levels down. The problem with this bill now is that 1) We already have noise laws that include noisy generators and 2) WE HAVE BEEN WITHOUT LIGHT FOR 2-1/2 MONTHS!!! I run a generator at night not to annoy my neighbors, they are running jennys too, but because the govt owned power authority, controlled by politicians like Sen Cruz, cannot provide power.

Why can't they provide power? Partly because of the hurricane. But also because politicians like Sen Cruz have not been doing their jobs for the past 30-40 years and currently a large part of the generating capacity in northern PR is inoperable. The hurricane blew down the south to north transmission lines but we never should have been so dependent on the plants in the south to begin with.

He does seem to say that the govt should cut us some slack in enforcing the law in these times. But why do should I need to depend on the better nature of the govt? They have proven over and over again that they do not have a better nature.

Thanks, Senator.

Prohibirían uso de plantas eléctricas ruidosas

Entre las 10:01 p.m. y las 6:59 a.m.

  • Actualizado
  • Una medida que busca establecer la Ley de Control y Regulación de Ruidos de Puerto Rico prohibiría el ruido que emite una planta eléctrica en periodo nocturno cuando esta exceda los 90 dB de presión sonora.
El periodo nocturno se contemplaría entre las 10:01 p.m. hasta las 6:59 a.m. del día siguiente. A estos ruidos, considerados contaminación bajo la ley, no se les establece una distancia mínima para su emisión más bien ahora se acomodarán por zonas permitidas y periodos prohibidos.
El autor del Proyecto del Senado 721 y senador por el distrito de Ponce, Nelson Cruz Santiago, detalló que “ante las circunstancias actuales que atraviesa el País, era necesario atemperar la ley a la realidad que vivimos”.

[SNIP]

http://www.elvocero.com/gobierno/prohibir-an-uso-de-plantas-el-ctricas-ruidosas/article_b7253b4a-d4ee-11e7-a610-ef203c90ff5d.html

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Current status 11/30/17

As of 11/30/17 status.pr is reporting that generation is at 65% http://status.pr/Maps/Map/AEE

This stat is not clear as to whether it is how much is being generated and as a percentage of what, Nominal capacity? or whether it is a percentage of customers or area with service.

I note that the offshore islands of Vieeques and Culebra still have no power at all. PREPA used to have plants on each island. Are they still there and inoperable? Been removed?

Humacao and Ceiba generator status

Yesterday, 11/29/17, I visited the Humacao plant. This consists of 2 25 MW (I think) gas turbines. One of them was running, though judging by the heat plume at somewhat less than full capacity. The other was not. I had always understood these to be 25MW but talking to someone at the site I was told that they were only 20MW each and that they were diesels. They are obviously not diesels and the guy first tried to tell me they were "20 megabyte" capacity so I am not sure I got the straight story.

They were also in the process of installing a new generator. That was also "20 megabytes" I am guessing from appearance that
it is a gas turbine.
















The Ceiba plant is just down the road from me and I understand it to be 2 25MW gas turbines running on diesel fuel. It took about a month after the hurricane to fire up the first unit. The second one, I am informed, was inoperable. It was finally repaired and placed in service last week. When I drove by yesterday, both were running

3 weeks ago I was speaking with someone from Manati who told me at that time that the gas turbines (2 @25MW each) were not running. They did not know if they were inoperable or what the reason for being off was.

PREPA Generating capacity

Does anyone have information about PREPA generating facilities? Based on my personal knowledge and experience as well as Wikipedia, I know about the following:

South Coast
AES Puerto Rico                  454 MW           Guayama (Coal, Privately owned)
Aguirre Combined Cycle     592 MW           Salinas
Aguirre Thermoelectric        900 MW           Salinas
Costa Sur                              990 MW          Guayanilla
EcoEléctrica[15]                  510 MW           Peñuelas (Natural gas, privately owned)




Total  capacity south coast  3,446 MW


North Coast
Palo Seco                              602 MW           Cataño
San Juan Combined Cycle    464 MW          San Juan
San Juan Thermoelectric      400 MW          San Juan
Cambalache                          247 MW          Arecibo
Total capacity north coast 1,713MW

The above capacities are from Wikipedia. All plants are owned by PREPA and are oil fired except as noted.

I have shown them as north and south coast since the big problem right now is that the plants in the north are not operating and/or capable of providing sufficient power. The big problem is transmitting power from south to north. 

Additionally, there are a number of gas turbines around the island for load balancing and peaking power. The ones I know about are:

Ceiba          50 MW
Humacao    50 MW
Vega Baja   50MW
Mayaguez   220MW

I believe that there are several others, including at least one station in the Metro area. If anyone has additional info about locations and capacities, please let me know and I will revise the list.

What I would really like, and can't find, is a map showing all generating stations and capacities. PREPA does have a site https://www2.aeepr.com/Investors/OperationalProfile.aspx showing major facilities but it does not show the smaller facilities.

PR Energy Commission's site at http://energia.pr.gov has some maps of distribution lines but not of transmission lines or generating stations.

Capacities above are nominal, not actual. For example, Palo Seco is non-operational. The San Juan plant is operating at reduced capacity (as I understand it and observed from the stacks 2 weeks ago)

There are several solar and wind facilities. These provide minimal power, probably less than 50-75MW total. That is usable power, not nominal power. For example, the Humacao solar plant, now destroyed, was rated at about 40MW but that assumes constant sunshine 24 hours a day. Actual capacity was probably more equivalent to a 10MW conventional plant. I do not consider Solar and wind significant to Puerto Rico's power supply.

PREPA also has a number of hydro plants rated at 156MW. I am not very familiar with these but my understanding is that they operate at significantly less output than this.


Welcome to Dark Island PR

Puerto Rico has been the dark island since September. We cannot get reliable information about our utility, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) in Spanish Autoridad de Energia Electrica (AEE). Not from the newspapers, not from the government, not from the media.

I have lived in Puerto Rico since 1971 and have some familiarity with the PREPA system. I will share my knowledge here along with what information I can find from various sources.

My knowledge is far from complete or up to date. I also cannot guarantee accuracy. There are many people out there who have knowledge of various pieces and practices of the system. I am hoping that this blog can become a site for collecting this information to give a better picture of what is going on, what has been done and what should be done.

The blog language is English so that those in the upper 50 can take part. I am bilingual and Spanish posts or comments are welcome.