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.
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