Hisar thermal project to add 600 MW in state grid
Yoginder Gupta
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 28
By the time voters of Ellenabad vote in the byelection in the second half of next month, the first unit of the 1200-MW Rajiv Gandhi Thermal Power Project (RGTPP), Khedar (Hisar), will start pumping additional 600 MW of electricity in Haryana’s grid.

The unit will be synchronized with the grid tomorrow by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. However, it will start generation to its full capacity only by the third week of January after certain mandatory trials.

The synchronization of the unit will also set a new record for the fastest implementation of such a project. Incidentally, this is the first 600-MW unit in the country to be synchronized with the grid in a record period of 35 months.

The construction work of the project was given to Reliance Energy Ltd., (now Reliance Infrastructure Ltd.), on a turnkey basis in January, 2007 and the foundation stone was laid by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on May 19, 2007.

This is the first project in northern India to be accorded the mega project status with the attached benefits under the Centre’s mega project policy .This has resulted in reduction of the project cost and, inter alia, a lower cost of generation.

The project comprises two 600-MW units, which is the highest capacity of an individual unit in the northern region. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 4,297 crore. The cost of Rs 3.19 crore per MW for this project is the lowest in the country and is being considered as a new benchmark.

The project has been allocated coal linkage of 5.55 million tonnes per annum of F-grade coal from Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd., Orissa. The Haryana Irrigation department has arranged the supply of 50 cusecs of water from the Barwala branch of the Bhakra canal for this project. As a standby arrangement, a channel of 25 cusecs capacity parallel to the Sarsod minor irrigation channel has been constructed for meeting the immediate water requirements of the project.

With the commissioning of these two units, the state will be able to provide additional 288 lakh units per day to its consumers.