Mount Coffee Dam
| Mount Coffee Dam | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| location | |||
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| Coordinates | 6 ° 30 '37 " N , 10 ° 39' 4" W | ||
| country | Liberia | ||
| Waters | Saint Paul River | ||
| Data | |||
| Type | Run-of-river power plant | ||
| Primary energy | Hydropower | ||
| power | 64 MW electric | ||
| owner | State property | ||
| operator | Liberia Electricity Corporation | ||
| Project start | 1963 | ||
| Start of operations | 1966 | ||
| Shutdown | 1990 | ||
The Mount Coffee Dam was also known as the TJR Faulkner / WF Walker Hydroelectric Power Station in the early years and was the second hydropower plant in the West African Republic of Liberia after the Firestone hydropower plant .
location
The dam and generator system were built between 1963 and 1966 on the lower reaches of the Saint Paul River and are located about 30 kilometers northeast of the capital Monrovia . The power plant was planned as a run-of-river power plant . At the location near Arthington and Milsburg , near Mount Coffee , a main dam about 150 m in length, a flood system with 10 openings with 19 m high steel gates each, as well as three secondary dams and a turbine house were built. The site was on a bend in the river, where a natural branch of the Saint Paul River could be used to regulate the water level. Further technical systems and accommodations for the staff were built 500 meters south of the dam on a hill.
Operating history
The power plant served to build up the electricity supply network in Liberia; it was primarily used for the port operations of Monrovia and for the population of the Liberian capital. The power plant was operated by the specially founded Liberia Electricity Corporation , which also had to organize the grid expansion.
American makes were used as generators and transformer transformers , the generators delivered 64 megawatts of power, and the end users obtained either 220 V or 110 V mains voltage at a mains frequency of 60 Hertz . At that time, the Liberian power grid was still built according to US standards.
During the Liberian Civil War , the plant was attacked by the insurgents; In 1990, the rebels violently prevented the flood system from opening, with the result that the largest side embankment (height more than 20 m) was flooded and washed away over a length of over 200 m down to the foundation . In the following years the turbine house was completely looted (metal parts dismantled). The main dam and the flood system remained intact and have served as a bridge ever since. During flood times, the river flows through the half-open flood system and through the breach in the side dam.
After the end of the civil war, several investigations were carried out on the dam with the aim of restarting the power plant. These were funded by the US government with US $ 400,000 as development aid. The studies provided evidence of the technical suitability of the dam, but the destroyed turbines and equipment of the power plant, the power lines and substations have to be completely replaced. The cost of purchasing the technical equipment, consulting, personnel and operating costs for the start-up phase was estimated at around 383 million US dollars.
With the support of Danish development workers, Liberia's power grid was converted to the European power grid standard in 1998.
The power plant capacities currently available in Liberia are exhausted. A Liberian government plan therefore provides for the Mount Coffee Damm power plant to be put back into operation and at the same time to build a West African energy network with the neighboring states of Sierra Leone , Guinea and Ivory Coast . The first of the two turbines was put into operation in March 2017 and is already feeding 22 megawatts of power into the energy grid. The chairman of Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) reported 15,000 new customers who ordered network access in 2017.