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CUC’s new $8M engine arriving in May
The new engine for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s Power Plant 1, which will produce 10 megawatts of power when it arrives in May, will set back CUC by $8 million, with the funding provided by the Office of the Governor, said Commonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director Gary P. Camacho.
Camacho said the engine “will arrive sometime in May” from Germany. It will be shipped dismantled and will be assembled in the CNMI because it is a “big and heavy engine,” he said.
Camacho said the “commencement”—when the engine is put into operation—“won’t be until the end of the year.” Between November and December, “there will be a lot of tests on the engine and that we have to get used to turning it on,” Camacho said. Through next year, engineers will be monitoring it to ensure it operates smoothly.
Camacho said the existing engines in CUC’s power plants are Man B&W Mitsubishi engines, so they will be staying with the same company. Currently, there are a “number of people here now and have been preparing the foundation for [the new engine] to arrive and then getting it installed in May.”
CUC power plant manager Richard Cano described in a board meeting yesterday the process of installing the engine, saying they “would have to open the roof of the power plant” and the “engine will have to be lowered from the top by a crane.”
Camacho said it is the first replacement of the engines and he is hopeful to get more replacements further on if they can at some point, but “[CUC] is very happy to have this.”
