CHANDIGARH: The  Guru Gobind Singh  Thermal Power Plant at Ropar is expected to give best performance during 2007-08 by way of record generation.

According to official sources the plant has so for produced 8716 million units with plant load factor of 88.70 percent which is higher than last years record breaking generation. Ropar thermal plant produced 9770.34 million units with plant load factor of 88.52 %.

PSEB has intimated the regulatory commission last week the revised estimate for generation has been 9356 million units with plant load factor of 84.77 5%.The actual generation at the plant is likely to exceed 9775 million units with plant load factor of 88.55 % which would be the best generation in the history of plant. Even the next year’s projected generation has been kept on lower side as 9469 million units.

The plant availability factor for the financial year 2008-09 has been proposed as same of this year i.e. 90.11%.This has been based on 130 days of annual maintenance schedule for all the six units and average of last three years forced outages. CERC norms availability factor for such units is 80%

The auxiliary commission is also likely to be slightly over 8% against projected auxiliary consumption of 8.5%.PSEB has taken the plea that since ash content in the coal supplied to Ropar Thermal Plant is more than 40 % the auxiliary consumption is on higher side. The plant is designed to run on four coal mills but because of poor coal quality 5 mills are sometime used.

The two units of plant are more than 22 years old even then the station heat rate is better than similar units elsewhere in the country. The oil consumption is much lower at 1.14 ml/unit against target of 2 ml/unit.

PSEB expects that Unit no 3 of Lehra Mohabatt Stage II is expected to be on full load in the month of March. Unit no 4 is also likely to be available for commercial running by the end of June 2008.With the increase in generation capacity  from 2120 MW to 2620 MW the gross generation from the thermal plants during the year 2008-09 shall therefore be16305 Million units.