Radio Havana Cuba's Science, Technology and Environment Program:
BREAKTHROUGHFor broadcast Sunday, December 24, 2000
Written and narrated by Arnaldo "Arnie" Coro, RHC's Science Editor
Hello amigos... nice to have you here on this frequency listening to Breakthrough, our Science, Technology and the Environment update. I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, RHC's Science Editor, and today I'll tell you about ENERGAS PHASE TWO... how the highly efficient electricity generating stations owned and operated by ENERGAS, the joint venture company between Cuba and Canada, will increase their generating capacity still more by installing the first-ever in Cuba combined-cycle electricity power generating station.
ENERGAS Unit One, near Varadero beach in Matanzas province, made history by starting to provide 35 megaWatts of low-cost electricity generated by using natural gas as fuel for its highly efficient gas turbine. Later, Units 2 and 3 came online, and the ENERGAS Jaruco power station came online later. The natural gas, coming from the oil and gas wells located to the East of Havana, needs to be scrubbed and cleaned before it is used as fuel for high-speed gas turbines, and in the process ENERGAS obtains sulfur and naptha as valuable byproducts of the operation that further boost the company's profits.
Now ENERGAS is getting ready to start building Cuba's first-ever combined cycle power plant. The project calls for the high-temperature exhaust gases from the gas turbine to be used as a heat source for a regular steam boiler turbine generator unit. By using the high-temperature gases to preheat water and fuel that is fed to the steam generator, the overall efficiency of the cycle increases dramatically, lowering the cost of each kiloWatt hour generated by the two systems that must work together in order to provide electricity from the two generators.
The combined cycle is also of great benefit to the environment, as the steam-powered plant has to burn less fuel to generate each kiloWatt hour, thus reducing its thermal pollution to the environment, while also lowering the exhaust gases reaching the atmosphere. Cuba will install several more gas turbine generators to increase ENERGAS's total power output to around four hundred megaWatts, which is the equivalent of the power that would had been provided by the first nuclear reactor of the Cienfuegos power plant. ENERGAS will produce electricity at a much lower cost than the nuclear plant, will help reduce pollution from the natural gas that had to be burned, and it will provide Cuba's national electricity generating system with a much more flexible power source, as the 35 megaWatt ENERGAS units can be started and stopped as required in a very short time period.
And this was Breakthrough for today, a brief description of ENERGAS PHASE TWO, the upgrading of an already very efficient electricity generating system with the addition of a so-called combined-cycle power plant that will increase the overall efficiency very close to the theoretical limit for such systems.
From Havana, I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, now wishing you excellent reception of our next show, next week at the same time and same shortwave frequency.
prepared 12-24-2000; transmitted 12-28-2000
transmission delayed due to heavy weather.For more information, via Air Mail:
"Breakthrough"
Radio Havana Cuba
Havana, CUBA 10600
Via e-mail: arnie@radiohc.org
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