AGARTALA, May 10 (TIWN): The commercial declaration has not yet been announced for the commercial generation of power from NEEPCO R C Nagar combined power plant, said Project Head Subrata Saha on Saturday. Talking to TIWN he said that currently the combined power cycle plants are functioning smoothly to generate power.

However earlier Saha said that that the commercial generation of the power plant likely to be by June, 2015. He said as of now no COD has been declared by the higher authority.

NEEPCO has successfully synchronized second unit of combine cycle power plant at RC Nagar this year producing 26 MW power, said Project Head Subrata Saha to TIWN. Earlier, the first unit of combine cycle was successfully synchronized. Once both units get operational commercially, they will generate 52 (26+26) MW power.

The NEEPCO has already spent Rs. 370 crore to convert the 84 MW (21x4) RC Nagar power project into combine cycle by using wastage recovering boiler technique. It means, the NEEPCO looks set to add 52 MW more power from its existing power plant at RC Nagar without using extra natural gas.

Besides during his visit to the state previous month NEEPCO CMD PC Pankaj met with Power Minister Manik Dey and said, “State government will get 50 percent share from the combined cycle extension project at RC Nagar at a cheaper rate than the usual power trades.”

The project to extend RC Nagar open cycle to combine cycle was completed with Rs 296 crores.

Besides, on a telephonic conversation with Monarchak Project Head S R Biswas, he said that currently there is no problem with the gas supply from ONGC but there arose some problem with the power consumption.

The total capacity of the power plant at Monarchak is 100 MW, out of which 65 MW of power will generated through gas from the ONGC and the rest 35 MW of power will be generated using the waste gas. The same procedure was taken up at Palatana OTPC.

On March 11 this year the gas turbine of the power plant situated at Monarchak under Sonamura Sub Division synchronized its turbine successfully with the generation of 9 MW of power on its initial stage. And later again the turbines were synchronized as asked by the TNGCL. It may be recalled here that the ONGC had already charged gas into the 10 km pipeline from Khedabari - Sonamura GCS, to its Gas Metering Terminal at NEEPCO –Monarchak.

The foundation stone of the Monarchak project had been laid by former power minister of NDA regime (current railways minister) Suresh Prabhu in 2002 with an estimated project cost of Rs 623 crore.

Northeast India's biggest and the first-of-its-kind 5MW capacity solar power plant in Tripura has begun commercial production from Monarchak under Sonamura sub division. The solar power plant was set up at a cost of Rs.40 crore. The entire power from the plant is being transmitted to the Tripura power grid now.