What Ails Patratu Power Project

 

NK SINGH

For the last one and a half months, Bihar is in the grip of a severe power crisis. The power station at Patratu, which caters to the needs of the Chotanagpur industrial belt, and the one at Barauni, which serves the equally important region of north Bihar where a green revolution is in full swing, are generating only 110 MW of power between them.

The Patratu power station, with an installed capacity of 400 MW, is generating only 44 MW and the Barauni plant is generating 66 MW out of its capacity of 145 MW. 

The Bihar State Electricity Board has, since its inception, lost about Rs 40 crores, even though electricity tariffs in Bihar are among the highest in the country. While the BSEB gets electricity from the Damodar Valley Corporation at 2 paise per unit, it supplies power to its consumers at 35 paise per unit! 

Repeated allegations have been made in the state legislature and outside that the Board is bristling with both inefficient and corrupt officers. But, thanks to the high-level support that such elements enjoy, no action has been taken against them. 

The crisis at the Barauni thermal power station is not as serious as that at Patratu which is operating at 11 per cent of capacity. 

The debacle at Patratu has severely hit the production programme of industries in the Chotanagpur region where are located some key industrial units like Heavy Engineering Corporation, National Coal Development Corporation, Tata Iron and Steel and Bokaro,

Besides highlighting the gross inefficiency of the BSEB, Patratu is also a reflection of our over-reliance on foreign collaboration. 

This is not the first time that the plant has failed to ensure an uninterrupted power supply. The investment of Rs 60 crores made so far on this gigantic project has not yielded a supply of even 100 MW of power uninterruptedly for a few months. 

The original project report, prepared after an agreement with the Soviet Union in 1962, had envisaged the installation of the 400 MW capacity by 1967. 

But there has been a delay of at least five years in the commissioning of the plant's full capacity and the process the cost of the project has gone up by nearly Rs 12 crores. 

The Patratu power station consists of four units of 50 MW each and two units of 100 MW each. The four 50 MW units were commissioned between 1966 and 1970; one of the 100 MW units went on stream in June 1971 and the other 100 MW units only in May this year. Many factors contributed to the delay. 

The Ranchor Committee, appointed to go into the working of the Bihar State Electricity Board, had exposed gross mismanagement at almost every stage of the planning and execution of the project. 

At the very start, several components from Russia were received in "semi-finished condition and required a good deal of machining and matching".

As a result, many flaws cropped up. It was pointed out by the Committee that no arrangement had been made by the government for inspection of the equipment during manufacture, Nor was there a cell at the project site for "proper planning, evaluation and quality control".

And there were far too many contractors who "often fell out with each other causing dislocation of work". To make matters worse, "the contractors had very few skilled technicians with experience of turbine work".

Two of the four 50 MW units got damaged as a result of a series of accidents and breakdowns in April this year. Once another 50 MW unit had been shut down for "capital maintenance" and the 100 MW unit was shut on May 2 owing to slag formation in its second boiler. 

The other 100 MW unit was commissioned on May 3 but it had to be closed down after just three days. 

At the moment of writing only one 50 MW unit is working, generating 44 MW of power. 

According to the Chief Engineer of the plant, the non-availability of spare parts from the Soviet Union is one of the main reasons behind the trouble. 

But what ails Patratu most is the lack of coordination and understanding among those who control its destiny. Some top executives of the State Electricity Board and the Patratu power plant are not getting on well together and the working of the project has suffered on this account.

No less important cause of the frequent breakdowns is the lack of skilled operating staff. The BSEB had spent several lakhs of rupees on sending some 50 engineers abroad for training in the operation of thermal power plants, but not even half of them have been posted for manning the station. Even the Chief Engineer is a novice.

No wonder, an SOS had to be sent for Russian experts when the four generating units broke down in quick succession.

Tailpiece: The boilers of Patratu station are so designed that they can burn low-grade coal with high ash content and also coal washery by-product. 

The site of the station was selected because of its proximity to the coal-bearing belt of South Karanpara which abounds in low-grade coal. 

Paradoxically, one of the causes of the recurrent power crisis has been the failure of the BSEB to feed Patratu with low-grade coal!

ECONOMIC & POLITICAL WEEKLY

May 27,1972