POWER October 2016 - 26

TOP PLANTS
National Capital Power Station
Dadri, Gautam Budh Nagar, Uttar
Pradesh, India
Owner/operator: NTPC Ltd.
Courtesy: NTPC
India's state-owned generator NTPC operates a large fleet of power plants across
the nation, and one of its top performers is found outside the capital of New Delhi.
Staff at NTPC Dadri have taken a proactive, innovative approach to maintaining
their plant, making it one of the most efficient in India despite its 1990s vintage.
Thomas W. Overton, JD
C
oal may be facing myriad challenges
elsewhere in the world, but it's still king
in India. The South Asian nation is the
world's third-largest coal consumer after China
and the U.S., and it currently gets around
65% of its electricity from coal, making it one
of the most coal-dependent countries in the
world. Yet, despite enormous growth in generating
capacity, India's power sector still struggles
to stay ahead of growing demand. Roughly
240 million Indians live without access to
electricity, according to the International Energy
Agency, which means the potential for
continued future demand growth is very large.
India has also sometimes struggled with
supplying fuel for its fleet of large coal-fired
plants and with controlling their environmental
impacts. Widely reported coal shortages
in 2014 and 2015 threatened reliability for
months, leading to strenuous efforts to boost
coal production. Shortages have eased in
2016, but long-term concerns remain.
26
Meanwhile, the government of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi has committed the
nation to ambitious carbon-reduction targets
of 33% to 35% below 2005 levels by 2030
as part of the COP21 accords, as well as to
efforts to reduce nationwide emissions of
sulfur dioxide, NOx, and mercury. Those
moves have cast doubt on plans for a fleet of
large " ultra mega " projects of around 4 GW
in capacity. Many have been proposed, but
only a handful have begun development, and
only two-Sasan (see " Sasan's Shadow: An
Ultra Mega Power Project's Dark Side " in
this issue) and Mundra (a 2014 POWER Top
Plant)-have reached the operational stage.
In this environment, improving efficiency
and reliability at existing coal plants is paramount.
In that effort, few have done as well
as NTPC (formerly National Thermal Power
Corp.) Ltd.'s National Capital Power Station
Dadri in Uttar Pradesh about 50 kilometers
(km) outside the capital of New Delhi.
www.powermag.com
Top Performance
At a total installed capacity of 2,654 MW,
NTPC Dadri is one of the largest power
plants in India. It currently consists of six
coal-fired units, 4 x 210 MW and 2 x 490
MW; a six-unit 829-MW gas-fired combined
cycle plant; and a 5-MW solar farm. Adjacent
to the plant is a 5,300-MW switchyard,
the largest in the nation, which connects to a
400-kV transmission line.
The four 210-MW units in Stage 1 were
commissioned between 1991 and 1994. The
four Combustion Engineering boilers, supplied
and built by Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL),
have dual-fuel capability and can burn fuel oil in
addition to coal. (The plant maintains 10 days of
fuel oil storage on site.) Dadri was the first plant
in India to employ horizontal feedwater heaters.
The plant's control systems were upgraded to
digital by BHEL in 2015. The combined cycle
plant was built concurrently with Stage 1, with
the units coming online between 1992 and 1993.
POWER | October 2016
http://www.powermag.com
POWER October 2016

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