First 500 MW unit of Sipat project reaches full load, to generate power in June

The first 500 MW unit of NTPC's giant power project at Sipat, near Bilaspur in Chattisgarh went on full load today, almost a full year after it was declared commissioned - delayed by well over two years. It will finally start generating power commercially in about three weeks.

Jairam Ramesh, minister of state for commerce and power was present, along with R S Sharma, chairman and managing director, NTPC, K Ravikumar, chairman and managing director, BHEL. The second 500 MW unit is expected to go fully commercial by October 2008. Both the 500 MW units use boilers and turbines manufactured by BHEL.

The two 500 MW units form stage-II of the project, while three supercritical 660 MW units form Stage-I. The boilers for these 660 MW units are being supplied by South Korea's Doosan and the turbines are from the Russian firm Power Machines.

Expressing his dismay at the delay, Ramesh  had personally met with the top management of Power Machines recently in a bid to expedite the commissioning and it is now expected that the first 660 MW unit, which will also be the first supercritical unit in the country, will be commissioned by 31 March 2009 and go commercial three or four months later.

Ramesh said that he had held detailed review meetings with NTPC and asked it to resolve all long-standing contractual disputes with Doosan and Power Machines amicably.

Speaking on the occasion, he said the definition of commissioning would henceforth be change. At present, a power project is considered commissioned when it is simply synchronised on oil, well before the other stages - (i)synchronisation on coal; (ii) full-load operation; (iii) trial operation; and (iv) commercial operation declaration (COD).

Ramesh said that henceforth a thermal power project will be deemed to have been commissioned only when COD has been reached. The policy of declaring a unit commissioned based purely on synchronisation on oil has been in vogue for over two decades just to show that targets had been met. This will no longer be the case.

When Ramesh took charge of the power portfolio, he conducted a detailed analysis and found to his shock that of the 6620 MW of thermal capacity publicly declared commissioned in 2007-08, 58 per cent or 3810 MW of capacity had yet to reach the COD stage. According to Ramesh, this reflected poorly on the entire supply chain -  BHEL, other main plant suppliers, suppliers of key balance of plant equipment like coal and ash handling plants, civil works contractors and also on the project owners themselves.