Tripura faces power crisis
Agartala: Power crisis is looming large in Tripura for the past two days with the suspension of generation in Palatana, Northeast’s biggest gas-based combine cycle and world’s largest clean energy plant Palatana in South Tripura.
Soon after beginning of the trail run of 2nd unit of 726.6 MW capacity, 1st unit has stopped generation last night because of technical difficulties in the turbine.
The Sudden shutdown of 363.3 MW capacity first unit in commercial generation brought the state into severe shortage of power supply, that resulted in long and frequent load-shedding for the past 24 hours.
According to Chairman-cum-Managing Director of Tripura State Electricity Corporation Ltd (TSECL) Shyamal Roy, Tripura is running short of about 60 MW power in peak hour and now there is no other option, except load shedding.
However, ONGC Tripura Power Company (OTPC) officials here on Sunday said turbine square of the first unit had found a huge deposition of waste that blocked the gas supply into the turbine for past three days.
“Without cleaning up the turbine square, we cannot re-start the generation from the first unit of Palatana and even after resuming the generation; it will take at least 5-7 days in normal condition to generate power at optimum level,” officials pointed out.
TSECL has faced a serious problem because of suspension of power generation within two-months from the announcement of commercial generation in Palatana first unit.
Tripura is now pursuing with neighbouring states to buy power, as board exam for Higher Secondary began on Saturday and Madhyamik will start from Monday.
ONGC Tripura Power Company (OTPC) Managing Director S K Dube had announced the commercial generation from Palatana on January 1 last. And he claimed that the unit was capable of injection 8.7 million units of power per day in national grid.
Meanwhile, 2nd unit of Palatana with similar capacity (363.3 MW) has begun trial run from Friday night and it could supplement only 15 MW of power to the average generation of power.
After full-fledged commercial generation from Palatana, OTPC would able to contribute to power grid at least one-third of total power requirement ranging between 1100 MW and 2200 MW in Northeast that would help the states to get a steady power supply in coming years, he claimed.
From the first unit of Palatana, Assam is getting 120 MW, Tripura 98 MW, Meghalaya 39.5 MW, Manipur 21 MW, Nagaland 13.5 MW, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram gets 11 MW each while OTPC was selling 49 MW.
ONGC has been supplying 2.65 million metric standard cubic metres of gas per day to the plant as per the agreement signed between both the parties for next 25 years, OTPC officials said. They added that OTPC. with the stakes of all other Northeastern states and power grid corporation, had erected 661 kms 400 KV double circuit transmission line up to Bongaigoan for evacuation of power from Palatana.
Palatana has been registered on May 15 last year with United Nations as the biggest project of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the world as per Kyoto Protocol. From each credit of carbon is equal to one metric ton of saleable carbon-di-oxide, which is cost approximately 12 US dollar of each credit. (UNI)
