Agartala, Sept 2 (TIWN) 74-days after the President Pranab Mukherjee’s inauguration of the ONGC’s first commercial power project in Tripura not yet started generation of electricity due to technical hitches, officials said here.

The Rs.10,000-crore power project at Palatana in southern Tripura originally scheduled to start generation (first unit 363 MW) in June this year.

State-owned ONGC’s 726 MW gas-based combined cycle power plant began generating electricity on a trial basis from its first unit (363 MW) on October 22 last year.

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL & FS) company and Tripura government had jointly floated the ONGC Tripura Power Company (OTPC) to set up the northeast India’s biggest ever gas based thermal power project.

The officials of the OTPC and ONGC told TIWN : “We yet to fix up the date when the commercial generation will start from this power project.”

After the inauguration of the power project by President Pranab Mukherjee on June 21, technical snags found in the 53-km gas pipe lines, laid by the ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation) to supply gas to the power plant.

“With help of the experts from the other parts of the country, the ONGC engineers recently cleared the superfluous dirt mixed with the gas in the gas supply pipe line by “special pigging operations,” an ONGC official said.

He said : “Immediately after the special pigging operation was completed, problems in gas booster compressors were developed. Two gas booster compressors were sent to the BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited) technical center at Hyderabad by two trucks with long trailers by road.”

OTPC managing director Sudhindra Kumar Dube said that the ONGC has already cleared the pipelines and now the project is being running on a trial basis for few days.

“After the few days of test run and completion of some formalities, the power project would run in full load for 72-hours before the commercial production of electricity,” Dube added.

He said : “Ahead of the commercial production, buyers of the power from the project would be presented here and necessary clearances have to be obtained from the appropriate authorities.”

ONGC’s first mega commercial power project, set up at Palatana, 60 km south of Agartala, will resolve the power crisis of seven of the eight northeastern states as the electricity from it would be transmitted to the power-starved northeast through the national transmission grid.

From this power plant Assam will get the maximum share of 240 MW of electricity followed by Tripura (196 MW), Meghalaya (79 MW), Manipur (42 MW), Nagaland (27 MW), Mizoram (22 MW) and Arunachal Pradesh (22 MW), while Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL & FS) and ONGC Tripura Power Company (OTPC) keep 98 MW.

The second 363 MW unit scheduled to start generations by this year end.

The Palatana project is a hallmark of cooperation between India and Bangladesh, which ensured smooth passage of heavy project equipment and turbines to Palatana through its territory by road and waterways, from Haldia port in West Bengal.

 “A 400KV high transmission power line (660 km) has been drawn up to Silchar in southern Assam from Palatana to connect with the Bongaigaon national grid in western Assam to distribute the electricity to various northeastern states,” OTPC managing director said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone of the power project in October 2005.