Empresa Nacional to Restart Shuttered Puerto Cortes Plant in Honduras

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--State-owned utility Empresa Nacional de Energia Electrica (ENEE) (Tegucigalpa, Honduras) is performing maintenance on the shuttered 60-megawatt (MW) Puerto Cortes thermal power plant, located on the Atlantic coast of Honduras, in order to restart it. In 1994, ENEE signed a 10-year maintenance, rehabilitation and operation (MRO) contract with privately owned Empresa de Mantenimiento, Construccion y Electricidad (EMCE). However, the contract could not be renewed after it expired in December 2004 because of legal and administrative issues, and the plant was shut down, plant officials told Industrial Info.

The plant is operable but needs extensive rehabilitation in order for the engines to be brought back online. Maintenance personnel from ENEE are currently performing cold outage maintenance in order to prevent the engines from deteriorating because of disuse. Workers have been rotating the engines at a rate of 5 RPM, starting up the compressors, and changing the water and oil every one or two days. Plant officials hope to complete the rehabilitation process in about three months.

The Puerto Cortes plant is composed of two units, the Sulzer and the Alstom units. The former is composed of four Sulzer 16V diesel engines with power output of 7.5 MW each, and the latter is composed of four Alstom SEMT Pielstick 18V engines with the same capacity. Both blocks operate in a base-load mode, and have a combined total power output of 60 MW.

At the beginning of the year, ENEE submitted a request for quotations to perform the necessary maintenance, but the contract has not yet been awarded. An engineering manager told Industrial Info that it should be ready in the next few days.

EMCE has been active in Honduras' power sector since 1992. It operates the 82 MW La Ceiba power plant and the 48 MW Choloma I thermoelectric power plant, as well as the 12 MW Choloma II plant.

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