Testing of the second generating unit of the Mt. Coffee Hydropower Plant in Harrisburg is set to begin today, Wednesday, February 1, a press release said yesterday.
The completion of the second turbine, which has the capacity of 22 megawatts, will increase the installed capacity of the Mt. Coffee Hydropower Plant to 44 megawatts, and the overall capacity of 82 megawatts. In preparation to place the second turbine online, there will be outages which will occur during the synchronisation process of Unit 2, the release warned. The process will begin with the unit preparation of ’emergence stop’ followed by ‘load rejection’ test at various intervals of 5.5, 11, 16.5 and 19MW.
According to the release, the 5.5MW intervals of both tests are expected to be carried out without experiencing an outage on the grid, while the 11, 16.5 and 19MW (red coded) are expected to have an outage on the grid. On December 15, the first generating unit was commissioned by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Other dignitaries at the programme were the Foreign Affairs Minister of Norway, the Commissioner for Africa of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs of the U.S. Government.
The management of the LEC apologises for any inconvenience as a result of this exercise and asks for the support of the Liberian people leading to the full completion of this project, the release said. Customers are advised to make the necessary preparations in relation to these power interruptions.
