What is happening in Puerto Rico, how is the response to Maria coming along? Whats with the electric service being out.

  I began writing this blog about a week ago, I got sidetracked and wrote one about the Jamacia earthquakes of 1592, (I get sidetracked a lot while I am reading, everything is just so interesting). This was a tough blog to write, so much human suffering, so little information, and so much finger pointing and accusations flying around. Somewhere, no matter what has taken place on the island of Puerto Rico, someone somewhere will have the job to sit down and document exactly what happened during that storm, and the response afterward. With everything we have read and heard, the facts are somewhere in the middle, I'm convinced of it.

  I worked in the Power Production industry for about 20 years, one of my long-term gigs, I never was one to hang around one place too long. I worked in wood burners, gas turbines, fluidized bed combustor plants, and circulating bed boilers, sometimes terrible things happen. I have a brother who worked in a coal generating plant in the North, he was on shift when a 60-megawatt turbine exploded, it was brand new and going through its startup tests, something happened and a slug of oil got into the stream of high-pressure steam. When it entered the steam turbine spinning at about 3300 rpm it was like a sidewinder missile hit the blades, no one was killed or injured, they were lucky.
  I'm thinking about Puerto Rico and what seems like a long delay in restoring Electrical service, it's been about 100 days and 50% of the U.S. protected island is still without power. I'm wondering how unreasonable that amount of time is for this giant of a disaster. Now I'm not talking about the political atmosphere which is dominating our entire countries news and reality spectrum, I'm addressing what mechanical, manpower, and supply problems that may be encountered when a Power Plant goes down, and some of the time frames for receiving emergency repair parts.
  The Power Generation is now at 70% of what it was before the hurricane disaster, It sounds slow but it is actually fairly quick. there is a lot of infrastructures affected when a disaster such as this strikes. I'm not sure what damage was incurred during the storm but one can make some assumptions about what was damaged, and consequently how long the repairs may take. The equipment that could cause long delays are units such as:

  Steam Turbines, extremely large industrial machines which take at least one week to disassemble just to get to a level of being able to inspect them. I am assuming all the Generators on the island made it through the storm, if not a year wait would not be out of the question for the time of a new unit being built. Some have only one moving part, depending on the manufacturer, some have valves operating the stages of the blades inside the case. The brand of Steam Turbine makes a difference in the amount of time it takes to rebuild or construct a new one.
  Generators, driven by the Steam Turbine these guys are big, heavy, and complicated, however, they also have one moving part, but what a part it is. Constructed of mostly copper windings, they have a "rotor" (referred to as the "field"), The rotor spins driven by the Steam Turbine, some have gearboxes to reduce or increase the RPMs to enable them to match the frequency of the power grid. They must spin in sync with the grid, or an explosion can occur, the frequency must be in increments of 60 hertz, 60 cycles per minute, one revolution per second, A Generator is not surprisingly, all about the electrical output, that's it's job. Apparently, the Generators were likewise not impacted, a really good thing for Puerto Rico.

Typical electrical generator, yep they are big.

  Those two pieces of equipment if destroyed could have caused a much longer wait for the lights to come back on, but that's not the only source that is capable of creating a long-term power outage.
  Petroleum is the main driver of the Country, fueling transportation, electrical generation, and most industry, it supplies 3/4 of the energy consumed in the Island Country. 47% of the electricity is realized from the use of petroleum as the means to create steam to drive the turbines, 34% is from Natural Gas, which suggest that is the number of Gas Turbines spinning to create Power, although some plants do burn Natural Gas in conventional boilers and Steam Generators, (HRSG)
  Coal provided fuel for production of 17% of the supply of electrical power, coal, however, is extremely expensive fuel to use in the production of electrical power, more so in light of the advent of Solar, Wind, and Gas Turbine generating technology. A side note, coal will never provide the level of fuel for power plants as long as Natural Gas is abundant. Maintaining the infrastructure of coal mining, delivery, storage at the sites, fuel feed equipment wearing out, and the internals of the boiler "Fire Box" being torn up by it is just too cost prohibitive in the modern age. The solid fuel plants I worked at regularly spent tens of millions of dollars a year maintaining equipment, it's one of those industries that dictate an enormous amount of money be spent to make almost the same amount, making electricity is expensive.
  Renewable energy supplies 2% of the demand, Solar, Wind, and Hydro are the usual suspects. Wind farms supplied 1/2 of Puerto Rico's renewable energy, there are two farms on the island, one is the 95 megawatt (millions of watts) Santa Isabel plant the biggest wind farm in use on the Caribbean. Solar supplies 127 megawatts of electricity of utility-scale solar generating capacity and 88 MW of general distribution use to everyday consumers.
  It takes a lot to produce electrical power in amounts needed to supply a large city, let alone a small country. Still, the reality is that 600,000 people remain in the dark, people are angry, surprised, and some have resigned to the fact it may be much longer. During September of 2016, a power failure caused the entire island to be without power for 3 days, that was nothing compared to this. This time the finger pointing is rampant, everyone is frustrated.
  The Army Corp of Engineers, (have you ever tried to talk to those people? Holy cow, they are terrible to deal with) the Army Corp says it may take until May to restore all power, they blame the rough terrain, lack of supplies, and aging infrastructure, blaming the 11 year recession prior to the storm. Some in the mountain regions believe it may take much longer to restore utilities, they are most likely correct. Dealing with the Army Corp, (I said I won't get political but) I would like to add one comment for the Army Corp. from me "A little bit of leadership would go a long way." It is sorely lacking in that organization.
  3500 utility workers are on the job restoring power, to me that doesn't sound like a lot of workers on the scale of this disaster, another 1500 have been requested. These are highly trained, and skilled workers, in the best of times they are few and far between, we need to remember Houston and Florida both have demands for the same services.
  14,000 utility poles are in Puerto Rico, another 7,000 will arrive shortly. With 2,400 miles of power lines, 30,000 miles of distribution lines and 342 substations each suffering major damages during the storm.

A Huge transformer, it one this size is destroyed, the time to order,
build and deliver a replacement is substantial. 

  The question remains, "is this an unreasonable amount of time to wait?" The short answer is I don't know, (Bad answer Jacques) I am unable to find any source to find out the extent of damage on the island. Most of what I have read deal with the populations "expectations" of what should be happening, that's mostly emotional, I am sure I would be emotional as well. One clue that I read stated that 342 substations suffered substantial damages, that tells me of those still in need of repairs if transformers, breakers, and special insulators are needed, and on back order, the outage could last a very much longer time, maybe a year.
  I've been wanting to write a blog on Puerto Rico, however, information coming from there, Florida, and Houston is as rare as hens' teeth. There are plenty of accusations, finger-pointing, blaming, and political posturing to last for 10 more disasters. A certain amount of blame can always be directed towards the Government, (deserved mostly), local power companies can be pointed at, and any one in charge will be scapegoated (some rightfully so, others not so much), I have a hard time thinking that all of that human suffering is brought down upon the residents of the island intentionally, I like to think our elected officials have our interest at heart, although it's getting harder and harder to believe, I won't get discouraged, I hope the people of Puerto Rico won't either.

jacquesandkate  emergencykitsplus.com