First 800MW thermal plant in TN
Posted on: 30/Jan/2016 12:33:45 PM
TANGEDCO is at the verge of increasing its thermal capacity in the following years. The foundation for a super critical thermal unit of 800 MW capacity was laid yesterday. This holds the pride of being the first such thermal unit of this capacity in the state. The unit is at North Chennai where there are 2 other 600MW units and smaller units of 220MW capacity each. This new unit is set up at Rs 6376 crore and will be commissioned in August 2016.
The 250 acres in North Chennai Thermal Plant complex at Thiruvallur will be used to set up this new plant. The project received government clearance from the union ministry of environment on 20th January. There are two tenders of which one is with the hands of BHEL, New Delhi. BHEL will take care of installing boiler, generator and turbine. Another techno-commercial bid to perform civil works is under evaluation, said one of the TANGEDCO official.
Until now, the maximum capacity of Thermal plants in Tamil Nadu is 600MW; there are two such units at present – one in North Chennai and the other in Mettur which got installed in 2013 and 2014 following huge delay due to several issues.
A bit more on the new 800MW plant
These two newly set 800Mw plants will be fueled by coal which in turn will be sourced from within the country. TANGEDCO will purchase 2.51 tonnes of coal every year from MMTC for which the two have got into an MoU. There was no such plant in the state until two years ago. As compared to other states like Gujarat or Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu has been far behind in terms of thermal power capacity. These two states do excellently well and adding to this is the low cost involved in production.
There are a very few thermal units with 800MW power. The first such plant was set up by Tata Power in Gujarat in 2013.
There will also be new units set up at Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and the power generation will be in from next month.
