* Author: Jaime Riesco Canela *
My name is Jaime Riesco and I’m fortunate to have a huge workplace. To be more specific, my office measures 7,982 square kilometres, which is the surface area of the Sil River Basin managed by Iberdrola Generación, for the maintenance of which I am in charge. The river’s 228 kilometres and the 100 cubic metres of its average water level are among my daily concerns.
From the border between Castile and León with Galicia to where it flows into the Miño, the Sil River Basin has a total of 19 hydroelectric power plants and 38 generators, with an overall capacity of 1,300 MW.
Unlike other hydrographic basins that have high capacity reservoirs, those on the River Sil are relatively small. At times of high rainfall, it is inevitable for there to be more water flowing in the river than can be handled by the generators, and this means it is necessary to open the spillways on the dams and evacuate the excess. This is a regular occurrence in the winter months.
The weather doesn’t know what time it is or if it’s a bank holiday, so we have to be on call at all times and ready in case it is necessary to mobilise all our teams to open the spillways on the dams and deal with floods. If this wasn’t done, the safety of people, the environment and the facilities would be affected.
As the person in charge of maintenance, I have to plan the work on the various generators, minimise downtimes and make the most out of our assets. As well as being a river basin that is known for rapid flooding, the Sil System is complex because of the great number of canals that divert water between dams, connected pipelines that enter and exit various generators and connected water pumping. The number of conditioning factors involved in planning the maintenance required by the basin means that it is like a giant Sudoku puzzle.Image may be NSFW.
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Another basic part of my work is the on-site monitoring of maintenance work, with visits to the various facilities and first-hand knowledge of how work is going, as well as any possible deviations from the schedule.
Fortunately, I have an excellent team of 94 professionals coordinated by five highly experienced and knowledgeable managers from the Production Centre. The human factor is a decisive one and that is why we are committed to promoting ongoing improvement for the team, whose members are young, experienced, versatile and highly motivated.
The first thing I do every morning is check if there were any exceptions in the installations during the night and carefully analyse the information forwarded by the Basin Operation Centre (COC, which supervises all of the power plants on the Sil using a remotely controlled IT system) as well as any measures that our personnel on standby may have had to take.
Iberdrola projects underway on the River Sil include the construction of the San Esteban II and San Pedro II power plants, where the Company´s experience through several years of operation and maintenance in the river basin is put into practice. The goal is that the new plants should incorporate in their design competitive advantages that will facilitate operation and maintenance and reduce downtime.
I’m proud of the commitment that we have at Iberdrola, and by extension, in the Sil River Basin, with regards to health and safety and the environment. The latter has been translated into very specific measures, such as the use of self-lubricated materials, oil disposal, replacing mineral oils with biodegradable alternatives, soundproofing facilities or raising awareness of environmental issues among our personnel.
