Gujarat power plant powered with IT

INDIA: Technology and consulting expertise is set to optimize country’s largest coal-fired plant. As a press release adds, Invensys Operations Management, a provider of technology systems, software solutions and consulting services to the process and manufacturing industries, has signed a U.S. multi-million dollar deal with Coastal Gujarat Power Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Power Limited, to provide end-to-end integrated services and solutions that will fully optimize India’s first ultra-mega 4000MW power plant. Located in Mundra in the Gujarat Sate of India, it will be India’s largest coal-fired power plant when completed in 2013.

Under the terms of the agreement, Invensys will provide distributed and critical control systems, emergency shutdown systems, advanced process control, plant optimization and operator training simulator technology. The scope of the project includes the provision of end-to-end solutions, from boiler management systems to turbine auxiliary controls, with interfaces for systems integration with other technology vendors.

Coastal Gujarat Power will be the first of the new mega power plants that will lead power generation capacity, efficiency and environmental sustainability. Some of the important evaluation criteria for selection of an automation world-class technology partner are reliability, excellence in safety systems and measures and experience in delivering large-scale, multi-vendor projects seamlessly on schedule. After a very rigorous and stringent selection process, Invensys was selected because of the long-term commitment to offer best-in-class solutions and consulting expertise.

India’s rapid economic development will continue to drive energy demand, and the country has a five-year plan to create more than 78 GW of additional capacity by 2012. Coastal Gujarat Power can immediately leverage Invensys

Operations Management’s global expertise and engineering capabilities, giving them the assurance of proven delivery capability and commitment to train Coastal Gujarat’s operators using a dynamic simulation environment with world-class operator training methodology, it states.

Coastal Gujarat Power Ltd (CGPL) was incorporated on 10th Feb. 2006, as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to implement the Mundra Ultra Mega Power Project. The Mundra UMPP was awarded to Tata Power and as per the share purchase agreement Tata Power acquired CGPL on 22 April 2007. The project will have five units of 800 MW each, generating a total of 4,000 MW using supercritical technology and 40,000 MT /day imported coal. Power will be

evacuated through six 400kV lines, to be installed by Power Grid, to ultimately benefit the States of Gujarat, Maharastra, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.