MY STRAINED EXPERIENCE IN VANDANA

MY STRAINED EXPERIENCE IN VANDANA

Preamble: Mr. Vinod Agrawal, MD, Vandana Vidhyut Limited sent his trusted lieutenant Kailash Sharma to my Salt Lake residence during end November, 2013 with a specific request to visit Chhuri, Salora Project Site and set right all the teething troubles that have made the Plant crippled after check synchronization of the 1^st 135 MW Unit on 3^rd September, 2013. He offered me the top post with full organizational power to complete the taxing jobs as per my wealth of experience. Myself and Bratin were there for a month or so from December 26, 2013 to January 26, 2014. We have seen something, we have heard something and we have realized something. Let me spell out my assessment clinically as below.

1.      Good Areas: (i) Location of Guest House was far from madding crowd. We felt that we are leading a recluse life with vegetarian meals only. There were no newspaper, no television in the room; least furniture. 2 adolescent Class XII students (Chotu & Aami) were in-charge of the kitchen. They were mere trainees in cooking job. So, presume, how the quality of meals are expected to be? But, they were lively. May I stay long in the Guest House; I was strongly thinking to elevate their educational level. They may not be able to fulfill our daily needs, but, they were keen to their jobs. We used to advise them on so many issues. Bratin, sometimes, guided them during cooking. We have no stomach problem or health hazard during our stay. The only area of concern was the set of choices for food which were very much limited. Rohit, another experienced cook, was in-charge (in absence of Chotu & Aami) for few days and performed neatly as per our too little need. 

(ii) DM Plant - It is an excellent post treatment plant with advanced technology (RO + UF); designed, supplied, erected & commissioned by Ion Exchange. It is the only installation of the project which attracted me a lot so far as quality of product is concerned. It is quite capable to cater the need of 570 MW station.

(iii) Alstom’s Recommendations - There was chronic clinker formation at the burner tips in each elevation (A, B, C & D). M/s Cether Vessels/VVL tried to solve the problem by trial & error method by increasing/decreasing PA Diverter length/height and angle of divergence without any fruitful result. MD Vinod Agrawal requested me to explore all possible avenues for quick remedy of the said long standing clinker formation trouble through my age old connections with good manufacturers/consultants. I invited 3 experts (Saswata Roy, Dilip Gorai & Suvankar Sarkar) from Alstom to have a physical inspection on 16.01.2014. They came, discussed and inspected the trouble prone areas (all the burner mouths were then jumbled with clinkers at their periphery) physically at all 4 elevations of the boiler riding on sky climber. They recorded their valued opinion/recommendations in the minutes of the meeting with VVL. The said recommendations were translated into action and the chronic problem could be eradicated. 

(iv) India Coffee House - We enjoyed good non-vegetarian dinner at Korba café.

(v) NTPC Jubilee Park - We had a stroll around the lovely Park in the evening.

  

2. Involvement of Non-Technical Personnel: Agrawal brothers/kin (MD & Directors) are not technically qualified and do not have any past experience from the grass root to conceive and implement a coal based PF fired thermal power project aided with DDCMIS & ATRS advanced technology. That may be the root cause of so many unpleasant decisions which adversely affected stabilization of the plant & equipment during commissioning for last 6 months. Series of repulsive actions taken at the decision making level since inception of the project are:-

            i. Selection of unreliable and inept vendor for PF reheat type Boilers. The said boiler supplied by M/s Cether Vessels is not proven in the Indian power sector. M/s Vandana Vidhyut Limited is the first customer of M/s Cether Vessels for such new product; first of its kind under trial in a project.   

          ii. Selection of unreliable and inept Chinese Manufacturer M/s Harbin Electric Company for 135 MW capacity turbine, generator and their auxiliaries. They have very bad performance record in some other Indian Power Plants; it was learnt. It's a fact that M/s Harbin is the least renowned turbine-generator manufacturer in China.

        iii. Selection of unreliable and inept suppliers for Bought-Out-Items (BOI) other than BTG. The quality of such equipments is very poor; cause of recurring failure. 

        iv. Mandatory Spares - Mandatory Spares were not at all considered during contract finalization stage for all the major equipments of the Units. 

          v. Commissioning Spares - Necessary commissioning spares were not supplied/brought by contractors/suppliers of all the major equipments of the Units. 

          vi. The original contractors/suppliers/manufacturers of BTG and BOI could not be made accountable to carry out the set Performance Guarantee Tests. 

   

The above mentioned immature actions are likely to cut very sorry figure during the life cycle of the project i.e. next 25 years. It is apprehended that it will hardly be possible to achieve desired boiler efficiency (86%), unit/turbine heat rate (2385/1914 kcal/kwh) and auxiliary power consumption (6.77%) of the Unit. 

 

3.      M/s Vandana Vidhyut Limited had started implementation of Phase - I Units (2x135 MW) at their Project Site Chhuri, Salora, Korba, C. G. long back in 2008 with financial assistance from a consortium of 4/5 nationalized banks. The 1^st 135 MW Unit was expected to be check synchronized on September, 2011 as per original schedule. There was huge delay and check synchronization of the 1^st Unit could be achieved sometime in early September, 2013. There were number of teething troubles and the Unit suffered several shut downs due to boiler tube leakages, mechanical/electrical faults and tripping due to actuation of boiler/turbine/generator protection. The Unit load could be pulled to 127 MW on January 22, 2014; but, could not be sustained due to sudden tripping of Rotary Air-preheater. At 127 MW load, ID Fans scoop (2) was found full open though the ESP was in service. It is to be seen whether 135 MW load could at all be achieved with prevailing limitations of this boiler, turbine, generator and their allied auxiliaries. The generator was suffering from persistent troubles of “generator stator winding temperature high/hot air temperature high” at machine load beyond 84 MW.

4.      A dreadful and detrimental practice of component replacement from Unit 2 to Unit 1 on urgent basis (prompt cannibalize action from Unit 2 to Unit 1 as advised by learned directors/engineers with an objective to reduce the downtime of that particular equipment/unit to take care of instant dire need) has developed with the concerned maintenance/project engineers of mechanical, electrical and control & instrumentation departments as there was no stock of mandatory spares for all the equipments of the Units. This shortcut practice is extremely harmful and likely to cause havoc delay of Unit 2 commissioning/synchronization in future. I have advised MD Vinod Agrawal to give up this habit right now.

5.      It was learnt that there was unprofessional habit of non-payment to original contractors/suppliers/manufacturers during contract execution stage of the project. It was a serious departure from formally agreed contractual obligations. As a result, such contractors who were involved with execution of Units 1 & 2 of the project became pretty annoyed and left site keeping their jobs unfinished. Then local street side contractors were engaged to finish the pending jobs. The quality of equipments/materials/jobs was found to be bad. It was a real threat and unrepairable cause of unsatisfactory performance of those particular unfinished jobs.    

Posted by Debabrata Dey on March 2, 2014