Power official blamed for closure of thermal units
Manish Sirhindi
Tribune News Service

Panipat, March 5
The Haryana Power Engineers Association (HPEA) has blamed the director technical of the HPGCL for the closure of at least one thermal unit each at Yamunanagar and Panipat that has resulted in deepening of power crisis in the state.

President of association RS Dahiya said the state was losing 528 MW of power daily as the thermal generation units had been lying shut. He stated that this had been caused due to lack of decision-making by the director (technical). The thermal engineers claimed that it would take three months to put the units back into action.

Dahiya said 110 MW unit no 3 of the Panipat thermal plant was closed on December 29, 2009, due to inflow of lubricating oil in turbine shaft resulting in overheating of turbine. This unit is lying closed for the past two months and the official reason given is turbine alignment.

Sumer Singh Yadav, general secretary of the association, said the 300 MW unit number 2 of the Yamunanagar thermal plant was closed on February 22 due to excessive collection of ash in electro state precipitation (ESP) hoppers.

He said the damage could have been minimised if the director technical would have allowed immediate shutdown of the unit. This led to damage to ESP hoppers of the unit.

Laying the onus of shortage of power due to closure of the two units on director technical, the engineers’ body stated that the power position had worsened due to wrong decision taken by him, who at present was seeking third extension for himself.

The association lamented that the management had recommended his name for extension despite his poor performance.

It demanded that a new director be posted in his place after the expiry of his second extension. It may be mentioned here that another 110 MW unit no. 1 of the Panipat thermal plant is also not working for the past four days.