LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
Hard to reach any conclusion when all the facts are not known- weather events spiking demand and using up reserves, break downs, maintenance cycles, heat up/cool down cycles, physical damage, theft of fuel supplies, fuel quality/contamination, type of fuel distillate, failure of the plants batteries (as happened in 07), grid overload, grid damage/cascading failure, lack of spare parts....Originally Posted by bigross86
Give us more information, give us more facts.
Gaza Power Strip - IEEE Spectrum
Rafiq Maliha who is one of the plants managers gives a surprisingly more in-depth view of the plant and the duct tape and bailing wire operations approach they have to use.
Some days, notes Maliha, the power plant doesn’t even have the fuel needed to provide transportation for its employees, a nightmare for a facility that requires 24-hour support. Other days, something as simple as a faulty temperature sensor can shut down operations, because the plant has no easy way to obtain a new one. ”We managed to survive up till now, but things are becoming more difficult,” says Maliha. ”We try to manage with temporary solutions, but then the temporary becomes permanent, and suddenly you have a complete failure.”
With its four 24-MW diesel-fueled combustion turbines and two 22-MW steam units, this plant was the longtime dream of Palestinians who wanted to wean Gaza of its total dependence on Israel for power. ”This plant was supposed to cover demand for the whole Gaza Strip,” Maliha explains. But today, only half those turbines are working, and the plant is producing only about 60 out of a potential 140 MW.
The US $140 million project was troubled from the start. Construction had been under way for barely a year when the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began in 2000. Worsening relations between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority made any projects more difficult to complete, not to mention risky for private investors. Nor did the situation get any better when the plant began operating in 2002, shortly after one of the initial investors, the notorious U.S.-based energy firm Enron, collapsed.
Today one of the biggest problems is getting enough fuel. It’s one of the many problems you encounter running a power plant in a war zone. Since 2007, Israel has restricted the amount of fuel it rations to Gaza, leaving the plant to operate at only partial capacity. At one point in 2007, the European Union, which pays for the fuel brought into Gaza, cut off the supply because it was concerned Hamas was skimming money. Deliveries soon resumed, and the plant continues to get the rationed fuel. Under the original blueprint, the plant would have been fueled by natural gas, but today it is still dependent on liquid diesel fuel. ”Everything here is temporary,” Maliha says with a wry laugh. He estimates that the plant, which receives about 2.2 million liters of rationed diesel fuel per week,[zraver- more in 09 than it gets today per BR's figures] needs over twice that amount, about 4.9 million liters [zraver- max 2012 delivers per BR amount to less than 37% capacity], to operate at full capacity. Without fuel, the power plant stops, and when the power plant stops, things start to break. ”Fuel tanks without fuel become rusty, and they’re destroyed,” Maliha says. The storage tanks grow rusty, the rust contaminates the fuel, and the contaminated fuel damages the equipment. Then the turbines shut down, leading to more failures when engineers try to start them up again.
Share this thread with friends: