Administrative Minister of the Presidency, José Ramon Peralta, told reporters that the coal-fired boilers at the electricity generating facility under construction at Punta Catalina will be operating in October 2018. He made the statements in an interview on Enfoque Matinal TV program on CDN.
He expects that by December, the facility will begin providing 40MW to the national electricity system. By February 2019, he said that the plant would be contributing 300MW to the system.
At the same time, Peralta said that businessmen from the United States who met with President Medina late last week in New York City are interested in acquiring 50% of the shares of the generating facility. He said that President Medina met with different representatives of investment banks as well as private investors from the United States because the state is interested in offering 50% of the shares to the private sector.
Peralta told the press that with the 210MW that will be contributed by AES Andres by the end of October plus the 40MW from Punta Catalina, the energy supply will be notably improved.
He noted that the generation of electricity has begun to improve with 110 MW from AES Andres entering the national grid. It had originally been announced it would take a year for the plant to return to full operation. Peralta said the government still has not determined clearly what caused the shutdown of the AES facility.
Peralta announced that administration is meanwhile resorting to imported emergency power barges to meet the electricity demand. He said the government has contracted three 33 megawatt plants that will be arriving from Puerto Rico. The plants are filling the electricity gap after the AES Andres natural gas-fired plant unexpectedly went out of service. The plant is expected to be generating its full 300MW by February 2019. The plant then will go out of service for maintenance while the three 33-megawatt barges make up for the difference.
Peralta says that the electricity situation will stabilize when the Punta Catalina coal-fired power plant provides 300MW by February 2019.
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1 October 2018
