AES Power Plant, Panama

AES is the largest power generator in Panama. Its portfolio spans hydroelectric plants in Bayano, Chiriquí and Changuinola and, since August 2018, AES Colón, the first natural gas power plant in Panama and Central America. Located in the province of Colón, near the Atlantic entrance of the Panama Canal, AES Colón has 381 MW of installed capacity and a 180,000 m³ LNG storage tank with regasification facilities that also supply natural gas to the regional market.

Panama sits where the Caribbean, Cocos and Nazca plates meet. Its Caribbean coast, including the Colón region, has a history of damaging earthquakes, and the country's critical infrastructure is designed with that exposure in mind.

A power plant of this size is national infrastructure. A significant share of Panama's electricity depends on it running, and its gas storage and turbine systems are among the most safety-critical structures in the country. After an earthquake, operators need to know within minutes whether ground shaking stayed below the levels the plant was designed for, or whether equipment should be brought down in a controlled way and inspected.

Without instrumentation, those decisions rely on felt intensity and regional reports, which cannot tell operators what their own foundations and structures actually experienced. AES needed precise, site-specific data, integrated with plant operations, from a supplier with a proven record in energy facilities. [Industry standards for LNG facilities, such as NFPA 59A, also call for seismic instrumentation on site.]

Estructura designed and installed a seismic and Structural Health Monitoring system at the plant. [The network combines a free-field AC-7x accelerometer that records ground motion at the site with triaxial accelerometers on the foundations of the LNG storage tank and the main generation building, each connected to GMSplus digital recorders.]

The system compares measured shaking with the plant's design thresholds in real time. [Relay outputs from the recorders are wired to the plant control room, so an exceedance triggers an immediate alarm that operators can act on under their own shutdown procedures.] Every event is analyzed in GeoSMART, which produces response spectra and structural reports that AES engineers can review alongside their inspection protocols.

The data serves the plant beyond earthquakes. Continuous records of vibration and structural response support predictive maintenance and give AES a documented baseline for one of its most valuable assets, while the plant's engineers retain full authority over every operational decision.

Another solution using GeoSIG instruments and a capable partner, showing that quality and reliability can also be cost-effective.