Biomass plants in Punjab have a chequered journey
WHAT NEXT? Punjab’s MoU with Chennaibased company to set up 400 biomass power plants to tackle paddy straw may be good news, but experts are not so excited about it
CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Government’s memorandum of understanding (MoU) with aC hennaibased company to setup 400 biomass plants in the state to tackle paddy straw may have sent a cheer among the common man, but experts in the field are not so gung-ho about this initiative.
It is not the first time that the state has taken the biomass power route to solve the problem of paddy stubble.
In 2006, the then Capt Am arinder government joined hands with Punjab Renewable Energy Systems Private Ltd( PRES PL) to set up the world’s first 100% paddy straw-based biomass power plant at Ghanaur near Patiala on a built-operate-own basis.
PRESPL was to set up eight more plants in the next four years, but that never happened.
‘FIRST PLANT WORKED, BUT GAVE NO PROFIT’
Lt Col Monish Ahuja (retd), PRESPL director, who is also chairman of the C II committee on biomass, says the 12-MW plant was a huge success. Besides the two chief ministers of Punjab and Ha ryan a, even the Pakistan Punjab chief minister visited it to gain an insight into this farm-friendly technology.
“Due to the silica content in the rice straw, nobody was using 100% paddy straw, but we overcame this sn ag with some technical interventions ,” says Ahuja.
But the plant, he rues, never reaped profits for the company. “The electricity tariff we get is a mere ₹ 6.20 per unit, we can’t be financially viable unless we get ₹ 8 per unit,” says Ahuja.
The previous Aka li-B JP government also made many promises about generating power from biomass when it tied up with Viaton Energy Private Ltd to setup a 10-MW power plant at Khokar
Khurd village in Mansa in 2013.
Bikram Singh Majithia, the then minister for non- conventional energy, had promised to set up 29 more biomass power plants with a generation capability of 300 MW.
All praise for such plants for the green energy generated by these, Tejinder Pal Singh Sidhu, who was chief executive officer of Punjab Energy Development Agency (PEDA) till 2013, says most of the existing plants, including those near Muktsar and Lambi, are doing well.
The initial plan, he says, was to set up 100 such plants to mop up the entire paddy straw.
But there were some challenges. “The paddy straw has high silica content, which builds up in the boilers. That’s why these plants use paddy straw with cotton residue or eucalyptus branches in the ratio of 80:20.”
OPERATIONAL PROBLEMS
Te j Pal Singh, general manager of the Viaton plant near Mansa since 2014, says there are many other operational problems.
“It’s an unorganised sector. We have to go from farm to farm to collect the straw during the season. Then it is stored and used through the year,” says Singh. The fuel value of the stored straw, he says, decreases with time.
7 BIOMASS PLANTS GENERATING 62.5MW
Punjab is home to seven private biomass plants at Mu k ts ar, A bohar, Mal out, Garhshankar, Rajpura, Nakoda rand Mans a, which together generate 62.5 MW.
MP Singh, joint director, PEDA, says they invited bids for more such plants last year and had received an enthusiastic response for 12 projects with a capacity of 150 MW, but these are still hanging fire as the companies hadn’t been able to sign power purchase agreements with the PSPCL.