POWER SITUATION BEING ADDRESSED Lorato Gaofise reporting for BOPA The Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) and its service providers are working on a plan to bring three units at Morupule B into production by end of June 2014, the corporations chief executive officer, Mr Jacob Raleru, said on (19/3/14). Mr Raleru was addressing a press conference meant to update members of the media about the corporation’s recent activities and plans in mitigating the current power supply shortage in the country. “So, by end of June of this year, according to the plan that we have, we expect to have all four units running at Morupule B. We intend to do this in a staggered fashion with the units coming into operation at least a month apart,” he added. To address the supply gap that would ensue, whilst efforts were being made to bring Morupule B into full production, Mr Raleru said the corporation was in discussion to conclude power supply agreements with utilities and independent power producers in the region. “As a matter of fact, we have a meeting this morning with one of such utilities and producers,” he said. Whilst all role players in and outside the corporation were doing everything possible to implement the plan and bring the power supply situation to normality, Mr Raleru said it was important to recognise that unforeseen events might lead to the plan not being achieved as envisaged. Therefore, he said, to bring Morupule B into full production, their intention was that, on a long term basis, Morupule B must have an availability target of 85 per cent. On a long term basis, he said the corporation was targeting to be available 85 per cent and on a short term, which would be the winter of this year, they were targeting for all the units at Morupule B to be available 100 per cent of the time. In terms of the current status, he said unit one was currently on load and producing full output of 150 megawatts. Due to heat exchanger failures that happened in 2013, he said unit two and three were off load. He also added that unit four was also off load due to heat exchanger problems that happened early 2014. “You will note that all of these units that are out now have suffered from heat exchanger problems, hence the reason why we have insisted that we get to the bottom of what happened to these heat exchangers,” he added. In terms of unit three, he said they were currently doing the inspections and tests after the repairs that were undertaken and also general maintenance and repair. Furthermore, the short and long term plan of the corporation, Mr Raleru said, was to meet the country’s electricity demand from internal resources, which currently comprises; Morupule B Power Station with an install capacity of 600 megawatts- 4x150 megawatt units, as well as the Orapa and Matshelagabedi emergency facilities, which together had a combined install capacity of 160 megawatts. From October 2013, Mr Raleru said the country’s power supply portfolio had been reduced to only two units at Morupule B outputting 150 megawatts and the two emergency facilities. The portfolio, he said, had also been augmented by imports from the region where these had been available. This situation was experienced from October 2013 until recently. The reduction in the number of units in production at Morupule B, Mr Raleru said, was on account of the other two units being; units two and three having suffered failures to a part of the boiler which known as a heat exchanger. Both of them, he said suffered basically the same problem. Following the repeated unit two heat exchanger failures, he said the corporation directed the contractor to not only repair the immediate damage, but to address the root cause of the boiler failures. “After unsatisfactory attempts by the contractor to do as directed, the corporation summoned the designers and the manufacturer of the boiler and heat exchangers to site at Palapye to get their views on the root cause of the repeated heat exchanger failures,” he added. The outcome of the interactions with the designers and manufacturers, Mr Raleru said was, among others, to identify discrepancies between the design of the heat exchanger and the actual installation on site, adding that other modifications were suggested. Therefore, starting with the failure of unit two, he said the corporation had insisted that each heat exchanger failure be followed by repairs and modifications as recommended by the designers. This, he said had been done on units two and three and would also be done on unit four during its ongoing repairs. In addition, he said the corporation was in the process of appointing an independent service provider to undertake further root cause analysis on boiler failures, as well as other issues such as noise levels in the plant. Regarding the recent and ongoing service interruptions or load shedding, Mr Raleru said “prior to the advent of the recent load shedding exercise as Ive said the country’s internal supply portfolio comprises of the two units at Morupule B as well as the 160 megawatts of diesel fuel generation the gap between this supply, which was available and the national demand, was met through imports from the region.” However, he said during February and early March 2014, the two units that were running at Morupule B suffered failures in close succession to each other. Unit four, he said suffered another heat exchanger failure, whilst unit one suffered a failure of one of the fans. For a while, Mr Raleru said unit one was operated at reduced output until there was a failure of the cold feet system. When this happened, he explained, output from Morupule B was reduced to zero. Compounding the zero output situation at Morupule B was the fact that due to fuel logistics the two emergency facilities at Orapa and Matshelagabedi could only operate for a limited number of hours in a day. The situation, he said, was further compounded by the unavailability of supply from the corporations trading partners in the region. The combined result of all of these events, he said was an unprecedented deficit in the supply available to meet national demand. In turn, he said this compelled the corporation to resort to load shedding. “Not only during pick hours as we are normally used to, but also during off pick hours. If you remember we have two pick periods during the day- from 0600hrs to 0900hrs and 1000hrs and from and 1800hrs to 2100hrs and 2200hrs. So, what has happened is during this period we have had to do load shedding, not only during these pick periods, but also during the off pick periods,” he said. Currently, he said only one unit at Morupule B was producing power into the grid. The other three units, he said were at different stages of repair after suffering mainly boiler failures.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 06:33:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015