Mighty U.S.-built generator feeds frail Iraqi power grid

specs with ours built to our specs certainly is a big help.


:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

and quoted it to some friends, but I realized I had no backup for that statement. I had heard that we were trying to replace the whole system with ours. Do you know if this is true? It would certainly make sense why the power has been so slow to come back on.

Brutally true.

...which is a trade magazine for utility engineers.

<http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb06/2831>





(much more at links above)

1. Okay got the money check

2. Lets build it check

3. Lets hook up fuel line no check ( not right kind of fuel)

Grade school class could figure this out and make it work.

Maybe we pay them to much money. Need some common sense on this.

Maybe we should look at fuel that's on hand and not which company gives the most money to re pugs.

the real problems are difficulties with different specifications rather than insurgent destroying the infrastructure?

It's that even if there were no insurgents destroying the infrastructure, it'd still be a nightmare because the Iraqis are trained to maintain non-US spec plants so the Iraqis will be locked into getting US support to maintain the stuff until the end of time. Of course this is no problem for US units in permanent bases...

Or until it's blown up.

...we installed a bunch of Natural Gas "combustion turbines" (because they burn cleaner than Oil fired turbines, among other reasons), but there is not enough of a pipeline infrastructure to feed the gas to the new turbines, plus what pipeline has been built, keeps getting blown up.

See my post above for more info.

....Let's build a nuclear power plant! :7






Guys?






:dunce:

:spray:

:spank:

... that a bunch of c*nts bombed a civilised sovereign nation
back several centuries for the sole purpose of greed.

Generating a market for the bloodsuckers to pounce and sell
their "Mother of all generators" and all the other crap that's
being peddled over there. Let's ignore the WAR CRIMES committed
by the mercenaries who not only murdered innocent civilians
directly but who assisted in their slow demise through the
destruction of power plants, water processing plants, sewage
works and the associated infrastructure.

Not only did the war pigs get to make demonstration videos of
their weapons in use but they also get to brag about their
civilian "rebuilding" work without admitting why it was necessary.

What a rip off! $178 million for what? This sounds like a seriously inflated figure. But then again, didn't some corporation out of North Carolina swindle the Dominican government few years back for $300 million (US) for a shitty power plant?

Tip to third world governments: Don't do business with US of A! You will overpay for substandard work, at best.

You've got me wondering. Gigawatt-level nuclear plants run a few billion, so by comparison it doesn't sound that bad, but I don't know what Large Scary Generators cost aside from the one in that article.

There are only a hand full of companies able to build these large gas-fired generators; GE and Siemens are two. Given who's paying the bill my guess would be that its a GE unit. The price seems to be in line with what the market rate was several years ago. I'm with a state air-permitting agency and can say several years ago this was about how much one of these units would cost. Keep in mind gas-fired turbines were the rage state-side before natural gas prices doubled. In other words we were pigeon holed into buying a gas-turbine without a bid at a time when we would have paid a premium. To make matters worse it looks like there was no planning because there doesn't seem to be much infrastructure for natural gas supplies in Iraq and thus the unit sits idle.

This is a small unit. Most stuff I saw state-side had rated capacities of 500 to 1500 megawatts (several units).

Anyway that's my contribution. What a waste; imagine the outrage if some inner city school district squandered this much money...sigh.

White House Aided Enron In Dispute - Cheney, Others Intervened Over Indian Power Plant

Saturday, January 19, 2002; Page A01

The White House coordinated a multi-front effort last year to help Enron Corp. settle a dispute with the Indian government, which the energy company hoped would deliver $2.3 billion as it was running out of cash in the weeks before declaring bankruptcy.

According to government records released yesterday, President Bush's National Security Council led a "working group" with officials from various Cabinet agencies to resolve Enron's troubles over a power plant venture. Enron, facing nonpayment by its Indian government customer, wanted to sell its interest for $2.3 billion.

The administration's efforts -- which included Vice President Cheney's conversation with an Indian official and were to involve a personal appeal by Bush to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee -- appeared to end on Nov. 8. That's the day Enron filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission revising its financial statements to account for $586 million in losses. It's also the day Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay talked by phone with Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill about the company's dire finances.

<snip>

The $3 billion power plant, located south of Bombay, was built as India began to open its heavily state-run economy and allow foreign firms greater investment opportunities. The nation's biggest foreign investment by far, the plant was highly controversial from the start. It drew opposition from environmentalists, Indian nationalists and even the World Bank.

The project is "not economically viable," Heinz Vergin, the World Bank's country director for India, wrote in April 1993, rejecting a request for a bank loan.

But some U.S. taxpayer-financed institutions helped finance the project. OPIC provided $160 million in loans and $180 million in risk insurance; the Export-Import Bank lent the project $300 million. The agencies say such projects create U.S. jobs and exports.

...more...

That's enough to light up about 3.25 million 100 watt light bulbs. So, realistically it would power maybe a quarter of a million homes. That's totally ignoring industrial and commercial uses.

I don't see how that can provide a country with 30 million people an extra 3 hours of electricity per day.

I'm not sure what electricity use is like in households in the Middle East (especially in parts of it currently getting nailed by Dubya's little bellum perpetuum), but I'm pretty sure that, for the most part, we tend to have larger houses which are less reliant on natural lighting.

Also, if you're rationing the current inside houses at all (say, lighting the living room and TV/radio in the evening rather than the whole house), that'd stretch things further. And if they're at the point of dealing with electricity in terms of extra hours per day, Iraqis would be doing that. It's almost certainly going to go further than you'd expect.

Like I said, I don't know enough about the state (aside from "sad and sorry") of the grid there, but wattags is wattage. If that's there, that's at least some millions of dollars that weren't spent bombing something innocuous.

That is only 10 amps current, assuming 100 volts and 1000 watts. Most houses in North America are rated for 100 amps, so 10 amps is actually very minimal.

When you consider the temperatures in Iraq in the summer, minimal refrigeration would take up quite a bit of that.

:kick: