PALATANA / UDAIPUR, August 22 (TIWN): In less than 48 hours time, Engineers of BHEL and OTPC got the desired success in Scaffolding process, the preliminary stage before starting Major Inspection of Gas Turbine, which is scheduled to continue for 15 days. At 11.30am on Wednesday Complete Shutdown began in 726.6MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) Thermal Power plant in Palatana, a joint venture of ONGC Tripura Power Company. On Wednesday a team of 15 members experts of USA based General Electric (GE) Company, the manufacturing giant of Gas Turbine, arrived at the plant site. Another team of 16 specialist engineers including foreign experts from Phillipines arrived on Thursday morning in Palatana.

Now everything is going in full swing as informed by TIWN's OTPC sources.

During the 15 days long Major Inspection the Specialist engineers will supervise the entire process and the BHEL and OTPC engineers will assist the General Electric's experts in conducting Major Inspection. As of now General Electric experts have taken full control of the Inspection. And round the clock monitoring is being done from GE's Headquarters in Atlanta, USA.

According to TIWN sources instructions are also being sent via video conference from Atlanta. OTPC MD Sudhindra Kumar Dube, who was scheduled to be here during the Major Inspection, is yet to arrive. However, he too is learnt to have been in touch with OTPC officials in Palatana.

  As natural consequences Tripura along with other NE states are now having serious power crisis as production from Unit-I of OTPC is zero. Already power cuts are occurring several times a day. A TSECL official told TIWN on Thursday evening," Earlier we decided to go for one and half hours duration rotational shutdown across the state but now it seems that the duration may be extended a bit within a day or two.

And the condition in Rukhia too is not good. So we appeal to the people of the state to co-operate with TSECL until the power generation from OTPC's Unit -I resumes likely to be by September 5."