El Cosa Power Plant, Puerto Cortez, Honduras

60 MW Diesel Plant for Wartsila

The El Cosa Power Plant is a 60 MW diesel engine power plant in Puerto Cortez, Honduras. The plant consists of 6 x 10 MW diesel generators and balance of plant equipment. Commercial Operation of the plant began in the summer of 1995, with this initially consisting of operation of smaller, interim generating units (6 MW each) to help mitigate rolling blackout conditions in Honduras.

Business Entity Initiation

Hiring and training posed unique challenges as there was a fairly scarce pool of local, skilled power plant operators and maintenance from which to recruit an O&M team. Rather than incurring the expense of hiring an expatriate supervisory team to fill this void, we recruited skilled personnel from local heavy industries in Honduras, and invested in conducting an extensive training program.

The training program began with video “power plant refresher” tapes (in Spanish) to ensure that a sound technical foundation was in place to build upon.

Sterling Energy provided a Spanish-speaking power plant professional with extensive experience in diesel engines. In addition to conducting this portion of the training, our Trainer provided overall management of the training sessions conducted by the individual equipment suppliers.

The total team, including the O&M,  management and administrative staff, was 39 people.

A System Sponsor program was implemented. Sponsorship entailed responsibility for all aspects of the particular system, including operating procedures, spare parts inventory, preventive maintenance actions, major outage work planning and for finding solutions to chronic problems for all plant systems, including:

• Electrical distribution
• Plant air
• Fire protection
• Fuel system
• Diesel engines/generators
• HVAC
  

A comprehensive maintenance program was developed which maximized the availability of the engines, thus further reducing unit down time.

Sterling Energy had partial responsibility for mobilizing this new, freestanding, operating entity owned by Wartsila and a group of local Honduran industrial companies. Our O&M mobilization program scope of work included:

 

O&M Mobilization Services

• Team structure and culture
• Recruiting and staffing
• Orientation and indoctrination
• Management systems training
• Sponsor Program
• Personnel Qualifications Program
• Policies and procedures
• Maintenance management program
• Tools and spare parts purchasing
• Accounting setup and training
• Administrative procedures

Plant Location:

     Puerto Cortez, Honduras

Commercial Operation Start:

     Summer 1995

Plant Description:

     6 X 10 MW Diesel Generators

Plant Owners:

     Wartsila

     Local Honduran Industrials