Reliance Khedar thermal plant plays truant

Vinod Kumar Gupta
Saturday, 26 June 2010
CHANDIGARH: Rajiv Gandhi Super Thermal Plant Khedar near Hissar continues to play truant despite tall claims made by Haryana Government and reliance Infrastructure.

According to information obtained under RTI, unit no. 1 operated at 610 MW for 3 seconds only and at 600 MW for 8 minutes 25 seconds on April 1 this year. Ministry of Power has earlier claimed that unit was commissioned on March 31 in last financial year.

It may be mentioned that on Chief Minister Haryana while inaugurating the synchronization of unit no. 2 on April 20 had told the gathering of engineers that unit-1 of the project, commissioned on full load earlier that month, should be stabilized as early as possible so that it started commercial operations by the middle of May.

RInfra in a Press Release had claimed that RInfra commissions India’s first 600 MW power generating unit in Hissar and Unit one achieves more than full load capacity in shortest possible time of 33 months.

All India Power Engineers Federation had earlier pointed out that the claim of HPGCL authorities that unit achieved full load is incorrect as unit could not cross 518 MW on 01 April as per telemeter data.. CEA has given commissioning date as 31 March whereas unit could go up to only 460 MW on 31 March and tripped at 2245 hrs. The norm of Ministry of Power defining that a unit can be considered commissioned only if all plant is fully complete and unit attains rated capacity on designated fuel had not been met since RGTPS unit could not achieve 600 MW after 01 April.

Subsequently HPGCL had declared that Khedar unit -1 would complete the trial run and achieved commercial operation by middle of May 2010. However, the unit was re-started only on June 11 and the summary of MW readings of this unit shows that the unit has not operated beyond 440 MW till today.

Padamjit Chairman AIPEF said that the claim of HPGCL that the unit was commissioned by achieving full load of 600 MW whereas the unit was started in the morning and the power was ramped up to 600 MW seems impossible. Surprisingly during the present run which started on June 11and till today the unit has not been able to generate more than 440 MW.

HPGCL had claimed two targets on April 20 First was that trial run of unit 1 would be completed by first week of May and second was to achieve coal fired generation from unit 2 by May10 .Both these targets have slipped while Reliance own plant of 2x300 MW at Rosa (UP) has achieved commercial run of unit 1 on March 12.Whereas unit 1 at Rosa and Hisar were synchronized same day, the Rosa unit has raced ahead. The EPC contract at Rosa is with Chinese company Shanghai, the EPC at Hisar is with RInfra. For its own IPP plant at Rosa RInfra entrusted the work to the Chinese company while RInfra itself has an EPC division.