 "Bengal to invest Rs 1000 cr in rebuilding Kolaghat power plant")
The government is in talks with World Bank for partial funding of the project-cost.
The coal fired plant at Kolaghat in East Medinipur district of West Bengal has a total of six units with a total capacity of 1260 MW (210MW x 6).
According to state power secretary, Malay De, the three units, which were commissioned in first stage are about 25 years old. Beside being low-productive the units are also highly polluting. “It has become an immediate necessity now to rebuild the units,” he said. The rebuilding of the units involve change of entire machinery of the units.
According officials, according to detailed project report (DPR), the project would cost about Rs 1000 crore. “We are in talks with international development fiance institutions, which funds this kind of projects. World Bank representatives have recently visited the plant and likely to partially fund the project,” an official said.
WBPDCL is likely to float the tender for the project by early 2014. “It would take about two years to complete the project. We want to make the three units operative again by 2017,” the official added.
However, the state power department has allayed concerns over possibility of power shortage due to no operation of three units for over two years.
Two units of 500 MW each of WBPDCL at Sgardighi, 250 MW of Durgapur Projects Ltd (DPL), CESC's two Haldia units of 300 MW each are expected to be operational in the meantime to make up and meet the power demand.
Beside, the West Bengal has recently turned into a power surplus state since last year. The power discom of the state, West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (WBSEDCL), is having about 10 per cent surplus.In 2012-13 I about 30,000 million units entered WBSEDCL's system and it sold about 3,000 million surplus units to power exchanges.