Haveli Bahadur Shah plant finally comes on line

• Two more plants set to add 3,600MW to national grid by June

LAHORE: The 1,230-megawatt gas-fired power station at Haveli Bahdur Shah became fully functional on Wednesday after missing its original commercial operations date (COD) by around four months because of a variety of factors.

“We have declared COD of HBS plant that is producing 1,215MW instead of the contracted 1,207MW, thus having achieved a fuel efficiency of 62.5pc against the contracted 62.4pc,” said National Power Plants Management Company CEO Rashid Langrial.

“We have completed the combined cycle operations (CCO) configuration in 31 months against the global industry average of 36-40 months for this size of project. Even before the completion of CCO, the plant has provided 1.7bn units of electricity worth Rs16bn to the national grid,” he said, brushing aside criticism that the plant was late by four months.

The HBS power plant is one of the three recently built gas-fired plants in Punjab – one being financed by Punjab and two by the federal government, reported Dawn.

All the three plants run on General Electric’s flagship gas turbines, recognised as the world’s most efficient gas turbines, and are being constructed by two Chinese companies.

Each of them has missed the original COD because of EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) related issues, unavailability of imported gas during winter, gas turbine delivery delays last year, burning of transformer and certain other technical problems.

Together, the three plants will contribute 3,600MW to the system once operational.

The Bhikki powerhouse being constructed with the provincial money is expected to finally become fully operational later this month. It was originally projected to achieve its COD at the end of December 2017.

Officials said that the delay in the Bhikki plant combined-cycle commercial operation is caused by a combustion seal leak in one of the gas turbines and vibrations and calibration issues in the plant’s foundations.

“First, a combustion seal leak meant that the turbine had to be lifted to France for repair. Then the plant foundation issues during the test runs pushed the COD at Bhikki for over four-and-a-half months as the EPC contractor, Harbin, took its time to fix the problem,” said a Punjab government official associated with the Bhikki project.

The second plant being built with federal funds at Balloki is also unlikely to come online before early June. “The burning of two transformers supplied by Siemens is solely responsible for the inordinate delay in the commercial operations of the Balloki plant. We expect it to finally start CCO by early next month,” said a NPPMC official who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to issue public statements.

All efforts to reach the top officials of Chinese EPC contractors – Harbin for Balloki and Bhikki and Sepcol-II for Haveli Bahdur Shah – for their comments on the delays failed as they were travelling to China.

When contacted a GE spokesperson said the three projects had missed their original deadlines for their combined cycle configuration because of a variety of factors including vibration and calibration issues, damage caused to a turbine during power outage at HBS, unavailability of imported gas, burnt transformers, etc. Nevertheless, the supplier of gas turbines admitted that the delays in delivery of the turbines by up to three months did delay the simple cycle operations of the plants.

Penalties: NPPMC CEO Rashid Langrial confirmed that the EPC contractors will be penalised for the delay in the commissioning of the power plants. Under the agreement, he responded to a question, the EPC contractors are bound to pay $6m per day (with a ceiling of 10pc of the total EPC cost) after they miss the deadline agreed in the contracts.

That means the EPC contractor for Haveli Bahdur Shah is liable to cough up nearly $60m in fines to its employer. The total amount of fines to be slapped on the EPC contractors of the two other plants is also in the range of $55-66m. However, an official in federal ministry of water and power said it would be difficult for the federal and Punjab governments to recover fines from the Chinese EPC contractors.