US’ SwRI to assess damage on Ghana’s Aboadze gas turbines
An independent assessment is to be conducted on how the T-3 at the Aboadze Thermal Plant got damaged.
The plant was commissioned in March this year by President John Dramani Mahama to generate 132 megawatts of power but it became faulty in June and stopped to operate.
According to the Director of Thermal Generation at the Aboadze Thermal Plant, Mr. Richard Badger, an independent US energy firm Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has been contracted to assess the damage on the four-unit gas turbines at the T-3 plant, reported the Ghana News Agency December 15, 2013.
Mr Badger made this known when the Energy Minister Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah paid a working visit to the Aboadze Thermal Plant.
According to the GNA report, Mr Badger suggested that while the assessment was ongoing, the plant should be re-commissioned to run on natural gas.
He noted that the damage on the gas turbines was surmountable, with engineers working around the clock to make it functional in the next five or six months.
The GNA reported that some chiefs in the area attributed the sudden breakdown of the facility to the anger of the gods of the area, saying that the authorities failed to perform the necessary rituals to pacify them before commissioning the plant.
Founded in 1947 and headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, SwRI is said to be the largest independent, nonprofit, applied research and development (R&D) organization in the US.
It provides contract research and development services to government and industrial clients in the areas of engineering, electrochemistry, fire technology; fluid systems and machinery dynamics.
By Ekow Quandzie