Radio Havana Cuba's Science, Technology and Environment Program:
BREAKTHROUGHFor broadcast Sunday, January 14, 2001
Written and narrated by Arnaldo "Arnie" Coro, RHC's Science Editor
Hello and welcome to another edition of Breakthrough, our Science, Technology and the Environment feature. I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, RHC's Science editor, and as always it is my pleasure to share with you about 5 minutes of airtime. Today I will tell you about one of the papers presented at the National Science and Technology Forum that took place here in Havana recently.
The presentation dealt with the major overhaul done at Unit One of the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes electricity generating station in Cienfuegos province. Unit one is a small turbogenerator, by today's Cuban National Electrical System standards. It is capable of generating just 30 megaWatts, and it was out of service for almost five years due to old age, among other problems. But engineers and workers in Cienfuegos remembered very well how reliable Unit One used to be during its many years of service, and after a very comprehensive review, they asked for the funding to bring the Skoda Works generator back on line.
One of the really big stumbling blocks that they faced was the plant's instrumentation and control systems, which were not only dated and obsolete, but also in many cases just missing, as some of the components had been used for spare parts of other similar equipment. Bringing Cienfuegos Unit One back into service required a lot of work, a lot of creativity and ingenuity, but as the workers at the plant said, it was worth every minute of it.
Now Unit One is back on line, providing a much needed extra 30 megaWatts during the peak electricity demand hours, and it has a completely new computerized instrumentation and control system that has made possible something really amazing. After the redesign work by Cuban engineers and the major overhaul, Unit one now actually produces more electricity with less oil, as it is an oil-fired power plant. Environmentalists are also very pleased with the results, as the online feedback loop that controls the boiler-steam generator burns the oil in a much more efficient way, and that in turn makes possible much cleaner smokestack gases.
Yes, they had to work a lot, use the classic Cuban ingenuity that amazes our visitors when they see old cars running here, and adapt present day technology to equipment that used nineteen fifties technology, but the results are really encouraging and well worth the efforts. Cienfuegos 30 megaWatts Unit one is an excellent example of how older mechanical equipment still in good shape can be refurbished, updated for using computerized instrument and control systems and given a new life cycle that will save the nation from having to make a new investment by replacing the generating capacity provided by older units.
Cuba is also doing a complete renovation and technological updating of all the existing 100 megaWatt and 125 megaWatt generating units, following a well-designed plan. Cienfuegos' 30 megaWatt Unit one was not contemplated in the plan for the bigger units, so it was done by the workers' own initiative, something that earned the authors of the report a national relevant merit technical award at the Thirteenth National Science and Technology Forum.
And this was Breakthrough for today, how workers at the Cienfuegos electricity power plant brought their old Unit one back online, with an up-to-date computerized instrumentation and control system. From Havana, I am Arnaldo, Arnie, Coro, Radio Havana Cuba's Science Editor, now wishing you excellent reception of our short wave broadcasts. Join me next week at the same time and frequency for another edition of Breakthrough.
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