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CEB ups high cost power generation; concern over coal plant’s unit one breakdowns
View(s):Between 2015 and 2017, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) increased generation from expensive fuel oil by a thumping 140.85 percent and private sector power purchases by 47.82 percent instead of using low-cost energy sources, the National Audit Office (NAO) says.
Electricity generated from coal, the source with the second lowest unit cost, rose by just 14.85 percent. “Instead of using low cost sources in the power generation process, it had been focused on high-cost sources,” the NAO says. In the same period, hydro electricity generation dropped from 37.46 percent to just 20.85 percent.
Meanwhile, the last Cabinet approved the awarding of a US$ 3.84mn (Rs 691mn) contract to the builders of Lakvijaya — M/s China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC) — to obtain “expertise manpower services” for Level B maintenance of the plant’s unit 1.
This unit has been problematic from the start, having multiple issues including damages and breakdowns. The audit report showed that it was not in operation for 291 days between 2016 and April last year. And it is now shut down again for the maintenance that Cabinet granted approval for.
But maintenance activities at Lakvijaya have rarely been done on schedule, NAO data show. Class A maintenance is a large overhaul and is usually carried out once every four years. Class B is required every two years and Class C, which is a smaller operation, is normally done every year.
The last time a Class A overhaul was done–requiring a three-month shutdown–was for unit 1 in 2015 but it proved problematic because it could not be restarted afterwards. It closed in July that year and the CEB tried switching it on in February 2016 and failed. It was attempted again in March that year. It ran for 12 days at partial capacity before shutting down again.
The CEB started it again on March 25 and it ran for a month before going out of operation again. It started running at full capacity only in July 2016 and continued till October that year when the boiler tubes sustained damages and plunged the country into a blackout. It was only up again on January 14, 2017.
“This explains the emergency power purchases in 2016,” said a power sector analyst. He also said that unit one has not worked for 533 days from 2015 to last year, which means plant factor has been at 37 percent.
The other two units of Lakvijaya have fared better with the total shutdowns in 2016 being 94 days for the second one and 103 for the third. But they are both overdue for Class A maintenance.
The reasons for shutdowns have been testing period to ensure the correct activation of the unit after major maintenance; internal faults; external faults; maintenance; and system control calls.