Chinese expertise for Banawala plant
Even as China refuses visa to Indian military commander, its engineers building the power project
SP Sharma
Tribune News Service
Banawala (Mansa), August 27
While China has once again kicked up a controversy by refusing permission to a top Indian military commander of Jammu and Kashmir to visit that country, more than 60 Chinese engineers and professionals are engaged in building one of the largest supercritical thermal power plant in this obscure village in the backwaters of Punjab.
The Chinese engineers, executives and clerical staff (including some women) were in their lunch today enjoying steamed momos, vegetables cooked in their traditional style and curd unmindful of the political parties elsewhere in the country cursing China for turning down the visit of the Indian Army commander.
Most of the Chinese experts working at the project site are from the eastern coast of Shangdong that has played a major role in the history of that country. Components for the project, including boiler, turbine and generator have been imported from China.
They were working round-the-clock to commission the first unit by November 2012.
Additional accommodation was being built for the Chinese staff as about 200 more were expected to join here as the work progresses for building the project on a turnkey basis.
The Sterlite Energy Ltd (SEL), an arm of the Vedanta group, has given the construction contract to the China-based Shangdong Electric Power Corporation (SEPCO) that has brought Chinese engineers for building the 2640 MW project.
It is worth mentioning that 46 Indian labourers died when a chimney being constructed for the 1200 MW thermal power plant in the Korba town of Chhattisgarh by SEPCO collapsed last year. This had put a question mark on the quality of work by the Chinese company.
Initially, the thermal power plant here was being built to generate 1980 MW of electricity, but earlier this week, the Punjab government decided to enhance the generation capacity by another 660 MW.
A spokesman of the Talwandi Sabo Power Ltd (TSPL), as the project has been named, was confident that the delay would be covered up and the first unit commissioned in November 2012. Efforts were being made to plug the delay of about three months that was caused due to economic meltdown world over.
He said the project was one of the first few power plants in the country to use supercritical technology that was not only environment-friendly but also less fuel consuming.
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