Chandigarh, April 10
Lehra Mohabbat thermal plant’s new unit-III has proved to be a headache for the Punjab State Electricity Board which has been grappling for three months for its smooth operation. In three months, the unit-III tripped 50 times. Sources said the unit tripped 19 times in February and 26 times in March and five times in April.
Along with unit-II it tripped last time on April 8 but has not been revived till this evening while the unit-II became operational on the same day of tripping.
The unit-III is to be inaugurated by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on April 14, Baisakhi day.
Chief engineer( operation and maintenance) at Lehra plant G.S. Chhabra said “ I am not authorised to give any information. You contact the Public Relations Department of the PSEB”. On frequent trippings, he said he had “ no statistics” with him. He said he was not authorised to answer any question on the incompletion of certain works related to the unit.
Construction work of the unit-III and unit-IV of the stage-II of the plant was awarded on turnkey basis on March 29, 2004 to BHEL. The unit III was to be
commissioned on December 31, 2006 and unit-IV on March 31,2007. However, unit-III was synchronised with the grid on January 3, 2008 and the energy generation in January from it was .001 million units( MUs), in February 36.2 MUs and in March 97.8 Mus. From 3 January to March 31, generation was just 134 MUs equivalent to a plant load factor( PLF) of 25.4 per cent.
Obviously, the unit-III has been tripping because of the poor quality of mechanical work. The PSEB is engaged in tussle with BHEL over the quality issue.
Whereas the unit-III was synchronized to the grid several months behind schedule, the unit IV, that was to be operationalised in March last year, is not expected to be put on steam before December 2008, with slippage of 21 months.
In fact work on certain vital parts especially its coal handling plant has been not completed yet. Due to the incompletion of coal handling system , the unit III is being operated with coal from stage-1( unit 1 and unit II). However, sources said coal
system of stage-1 was not designed to cater to the requirement of a third unit of 250 MW. Due to the additional burden of unit III, the coal handling system of stage 1 can not unload the additional coal rakes and resultantly it is bound the hit the PSEB hard in form of demurrage charges.
Because of the delay in commissioning the unit III by several months and of the unit -IV by about 21 months, the generation loss to the PSEB would be over 5,000 MUs. During this period the PSEB had to purchase power from the grid at a rate up to Rs 7 per unit. The PSEB would suffer a loss of Rs 2,000 crore because of delay factor. In addition to it, the project cost (stage II) itself has gone up by Rs 600 crore from Rs 1679 crore. The PSEB had got the loan at concessional rate of interest for Lehra stage-II with the condition the project was to be commissioned by March 31 last year. Due to the slippage, the PSEB, perhaps, will not be entitled now lower rate of interest and expected to suffer another burden of Rs 200 crore on this count.
