Badarpur power plant reopens for the last summer

RESTARTED 44yearold plant was reopened to meet electricity demand ahead of summer and will be kept in operation till July

NEWDELHI: The Badarpur Thermal Power Station ( BTPS) has restarted operations this week, four months after it was closed down for causing pollution in the city. The 44-year-old plant, which has outlived its shelf life of 25 years, was opened to meet the electricity demand of Delhi, which hit the 4,060MW mark on Tuesday. Officials of the power department said that the electricity generated by BTPS will be used to meet the power demand in south Delhi areas.

However, this will be the last summer when BTPS operates. It is going to be kept in operation till July until the 400-KV Tughlaqabad sub-station is ready.

“Until the Tughlaqabad substation is ready, BTPS will have to continue operating during this summer because there is no separate line feeding south Delhi that can take load as high as the one coming from this plant,” said power department official who did not wish to be named.

As of Wednesday, the plant has been generating about 154MW of electricity out of Delhi’s total daily in-house generation of 870MW. Officials of Powergrid, the PSU that is building the Tughlaqabad sub-station, said that work on the project is on track.

“Going by the pace of work, by July we will be able to commission the sub-station after which BTPS will not be required,” said an official. Reports from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee indicate that when operational, the 705MW coal-fired BTPS produces a mammoth 3,500 metric tonnes of fly ash every month. This means about 117 metric tonnes of fly ash, a key component that makes up hazardous PM 2.5 or fine particulate matter causing air pollution, is released from BTPS on a daily basis.

The Badarpur plant is spread across 2,160 acres out of which 1,680 acres is used only to dump fly ash. In mid-october last year, the Environment Pollution Control Authority had directed National Thermal Power Corporation Limited to close BTPS

Gas

until February to control pollution. But, the ban on lifting fly ash from the plant still continues.

According to the Supreme Court-mandated Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), the Badarpur power plant ought to be shut as soon as PM 2.5 levels in the air crosses the 250 micrograms per cubic metres.