The island of Aruba is situated in the Caribbean Sea, just north of Venezuela and some way south-west of other islands in the area. This gives it the benefit of a hot and dry climate, but it is outside the tropical storm belt that commonly plagues other Caribbean islands. “It’s always happy in Aruba,” says Jose Moreno, Accelleron’s regional manager for the area. Given these blessings, like many of its neighbors, Aruba’s primary economic focus is tourism, which accounts for around three-quarters of the country’s GDP.
The company WEB Aruba was originally founded to manage water production on the island more than 100 years ago in 1903, when Aruba was a site for gold mining. Water production is achieved through desalination – there’s very little rainfall on Aruba. Since 1958, the company has expanded to manage power generation for the island. With the focus on tourism, reliable operations in water and power production is paramount. Jose says, “With tourism’s importance to Aruba, reliability from these utilities is absolutely key. Downtime is not just a matter of inconvenience: if tourists go home and tell others that the air-conditioning wasn’t working, for example, then that could cause huge reputational damage.”
The company employs a range of power generation technologies to meet ever-increasing demands, including wind turbines and a new solar farm, but reciprocating internal combustion engines (RECIP) driving electric generators, alongside gas turbines, remain the core contributor to the island’s grid, producing around 85% of Aruba’s electricity. The company employs a range of Accelleron turbochargers to assist these engines: the TPL69-A, TPL71-C, and TPL-76C.
Local reach
A key reason Accelleron was selected to support WEB Aruba, was its extensive service network, with parts and service personnel no more than three hours’ direct flight away from the local service center in Miami. Having worked successfully together for nearly a decade, the company decided to move from a limited Maintenance Management Agreement to a more long-term service arrangement, that offers predictable budgeting for the coming decade alongside onsite service on Aruba, with a custom 10-year Turbo LifecycleCare agreement.
This agreement offers cost-saving efficiency for operators of Accelleron turbochargers on four-stroke engines in the marine and power generation industries. It covers standard spare parts, wear and tear, and labor, with Accelleron also reducing the administrative burden for its customers by taking over responsibility for maintenance planning and scheduling.
Alfredo Koolman, WEB Aruba’s CEO said it brought three main benefits: “The new service agreement with Accelleron means faster service and simplified maintenance processes for us, while we can rely at the same time on a full-service coverage.”
As part of that agreement, all services will be executed directly at WEB Aruba’s power plant with Accelleron providing resources and infrastructure to ensure faster service turnaround thus minimizing downtime and ensuring reliable power to the national grid. In addition to these benefits, we’re sure this will provide a very fortunate posting for some lucky service engineers!
Image credit: Shutterstock/Mary Baratto