In January 2009, we suffered an incident in our power station which spread to the main medium-voltage electrical switchboards, from which we feed the substations of our facility. These switchboards are linked to the national power supply and are also linked to our turbo alternators. Thus, the unavailability of this framework prevented the supply of any power to our facility.
On the same night that the incident occurred, we called all generator suppliers we could remember. We also called the largest manufacturer of electric equipment in Portugal, asking for the replacement of the medium-voltage switchboards, and asked them to look for generators because we sold out already the stocks of the companies that we immediately called.

The day after the incident we already had in our refinery the first batch of small generators. But the best news of that day came from the director of to the largest manufacturer of electric equipment in Portugal, informing me that he had found a supplier and he asked me how much power we needed. I answered him that we needed 20 units from 600kVA or 800kVA, without much hope of obtaining them.

Fortunately, I was wrong. Two days later, the first batch of 1000kVA generators supplied by Atlas Copco Portugal arrived, together with technicians and cables to make all the necessary connections to our substations. In less than a week we had all our 17 substations fed in low voltage installation with a total of 39 generators. Of these, 27 were supplied by Atlas Copco Portugal, the vast majority of 1000 or 1250kVA.

Atlas Copco was already a familiar name in our facility, because for many years we are customers of its compressors. But it never occurred to me that they could solve such a complicated situation of power supply.

During the six weeks in which we kept the generators in service, Atlas Copco maintained in our facility a technical assistance team (available 24 hours a day) that effectively solved all situations that would be expected because all these generators were running 24/7, subject to variable loads.

At a certain time it became necessary to feed a switchboard of 3kV which was connected to two electric motors of 800kW and 260kW, both with direct start. Atlas Copco installed 6 generators of 1250kVA and two transformers/elevators and 2500kVA that allowed us to start normally the 3 engines of 3kV, each. 
In other two substations was imperative to maintain uninterrupted power to carry on energized control systems of our process. Atlas Copco installed generators in parallel, thereby ensuring its redundancy and allowing us to do the necessary maintenance without interruption.
 
When I am writing this note, we are about to restore the power supply to the new switchboards. We did it with a great effort from our electrical maintenance team, but also with the optimal service provided by Atlas Copco.
                                    
To Rodolfo Neves, Pedro Gomes and his team, I thank the permanent availability, professionalism and presented solutions.