The former director of the National Energy Commission, Antonio Almonte told reporters that a “careless mistake” caused the shutdown of the AES Andres power plant early this month, removing 319 MW from the nation’s electrical grid. Almonte asked the government to carry out a serious investigation regarding the case that could cost the government hundreds of millions of pesos for the purchase of energy in the coming months.
In a document that was given to the media, Almonte says that the Pubic Electricity Corporation (CDEEE) and the Superintendence of Electricity should determine whether it was a lightning strike or poor management that caused the collapse of this major player in the national power grid. He explained “it is highly unlikely that under normal operating conditions the occurrence of a lightning strike on a facility such as AES Andres could produce the destruction of practicality the entire recovery system for the boilers and the generators, as reported by AES.”
The engineer went on to explain that “this type of situation occurs, with almost absolute certainty, in plants where the operators do not regularly test or verify the control valves, but leave them open for a fixed load that ends up accumulating particles and solids of sediment that block its automatic system of closure, even though the signals that protect the system reach them in time.” He noted that “to operate a generating plant with the safety valve not frequently tested is a technical and economic stupidity.” He said this must be investigated by the regulatory agencies and state supervisors in the electric sector.
He said that the Dominican government should conduct an investigation modeled after technical reviews from the American insurance companies that cover the investments in that power plant, and they must find out if everything that happened was due to a lightning strike or whether it was due to poor operating procedures.
The additional costs that will have to be absorbed by the Dominican government in order to provide normal service to the population because of the shutdown of AES Andres will be the exclusive responsibility of the generating company, according to the Executive Vice President of the CDEEE, Ruben Jimenez Bichara. Jimenez Bichara told the reporters that the contracts that the CDEEE has with the different generators do not recognize as “force majeure” those events that occur within the facility, but rather only those that happen outside of the facility that impedes the flow of energy to the circuit. He said because of this the additional costs will be the exclusive responsibility of AES Andres.
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El Nacional
Diario Libre
17 September 2018
