 |
| Mr Elford Felix, Generation Manager of the Nevis Electricity Company, (NEVLEC) |
Charlestown Nevis (May 24, 2004) The Generation Department of the Nevis Electricity Company (NEVLEC), recently held a series of in house workshops to improve the staff’s ability to function more effectively says Generation Manager, Mr. Elford Felix.
“I realized the competence of the staff was not up to a level,” Felix remarked while updating the Government Information Service on the situation of the power plant. “Nobody understood what they were doing and why they were doing it, so we had problems in them functioning properly.”
The Generation Manager pointed out that it was his first task since taking office in November 2003, to get his staff up to a standard. He noted that one of the first thing he did was to try and set up a training programme for them, saying, “the environment was not conducive for training, so I converted or modified an old workshop and turn it into a classroom.”
Felix, in applauding his staff for their appreciation, commended the number of persons who willingly participated in the two weeks session. The sessions were based on Diesel Mechanic and Power Station Operation. He noted that another workshop is scheduled for June 14 and will be in Electrical Operation.
He felt that the training would assist them in achieving a certain level of competence and added, “it is critical for the reliability of the system that we maintain, or the quality of service we want to provide. At the end, everybody working can operate not only here in Nevis, but any power plant in the region.”
According to the Manager, the staff was very grateful for the training and confided that his aim is to get them up to par during his tenure at the department. “After they have reached a level which they are competent enough, they can go over seas and attend additional training which can bring them up to what they want,” he commented.
Meanwhile, the Genertek engine, which was purchased in 2000, and was experiencing a series of problems has been up and running for the past five months. Felix noted that the engine would shut down on its own and no one had any idea why, and that he had taken time to look at it and found out that the control system was the problem.
He said, “It was a simple matter of changing the system. I changed the power supply to it which is attached to part of the main supply system and it is powered by a dc supply and it had what you call a rectifier which changes the power from ac to dc and I changed a few modules on to it.”
With an average of 556 hrs per month, the engine is the main backbone of the supply that the consumers receive, and that it is now producing 25% of the entire generation output. “It has been quite reliable,” ended Felix.
