Almost three years after it was shut for want of fuel, private utility Essar Power is planning to start operations at its 500 mw natural gas-based power plant at Hazira in Gujarat in the next quarter, a top company official said.
The Bhander Power-Hazira plant was commissioned in 2006 and commenced full commercial operations in October 2008, but due to high price of the fuel, the company had kept the operations suspended since the past three years.
It is a natural gas-fired combined-cycle captive power plant.
“We had shut operations at two of our gas-based plants with a capacity of 500 mw and 515 mw each at Hazira due to non-availability of the fuel.
What was available was so expensive, almost at $12-14 per mmbtu, that we could not even dream of generating power so we had to shut operations,” company’s Executive Vice-Chairman Sushil Maroo told the news agency here.