The Ru Creek mini hydropower station rehabilitation project in West New Britain has been completed and is now back online, feeding into the West New Britain grid after five years.
PNG Power contractor from New Zealand, Vortex, recently successfully completed the project.
Present to commission the power plant was Minister for State Enterprise, Sasindran Muthuvel, West New Britain Governor, Francis Galia Maneke with PNG Power Board Chairman, Peter Nupiri.
The Ru Creek rehabilitation project is part of the town electrification investment program tranche 1, with additional funding by the Asian Development Bank.
This mini hydropower plant is a 800kW station which consists of 2 x 400 kW cross flow turbine generators, which has not been in operation since November 2013 due to the failure and collapse of the spillway channel.
PNG Power, in a statement, said the plant required refurbishment, replacement, maintenance and upgrade of the equipment, machines and infrastructure to ensure that it is operational again.
Furthermore, this is to prolong its productive lifespan as well as to enable the plant to increase electricity production to its installed capacity to meet increasing future demand.
At this stage, PNG Power has maintained the output from the station at 80 percent of the maximum capacity of 800kW due to the current inflows.
The project was delivered well before the completion date, with PPL extending a huge thank you to the installation team for their tireless efforts to restore the station to full operating capacity with the support of the Kimbe Operations team.
“PPL is also undergoing refurbishment work at Lake Hargy Hydro Power Station in Bialla and we are hoping to make West New Britain free from using its diesel power station,” stated the state-owned enterprise.
“This is possible though our partnership with New Britain Palm Oil who are supply biomass power into our Kimbe Grid.”