GE inks rehabilitation, service pacts with Dabhol

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Mumbai: Finally, GE, which supplied 9FA turbine to Dabhol project, signed a comprehensive service and rehabilitation agreements with the Ratnagiri Gas & Power Pvt Ltd (RGPPL) which ensures availability guarantees of 87% after completion of rotor modification jobs and control system upgrades. The service agreement is worth $75 million while rehabilitation deal is of $55 million. The signing of deal with GE is crucial especially when the repeated machine failures caused over $300 million loss to Dabhol. On top of it, the RGPPL had to fork out more money as GE was charging inflated charges for repairs of gas turbines and compressors.

RGPPL sources said the signing of agreements told FE ‘‘Under the pacts GE will supply spare parts at discounts, provide repair services at their overseas shops and provide support services for the maintenance of RGPPL machines for a period of 8 years, extendable to 16 years with pre-agreed terms and conditions. GE will also install on-line monitoring and diagnostic systems which shall be connected to GE’s center at the US and shall have a resident project director at Dabhol. It is envisaged that these agreements shall help in providing the timely availability of hi-tech spares/repairs and expert services and thus helping RGPPL in improving the availability of the machines.’’

RGPPL is generating around 900 mw from the three available gas turbines. As per the schedule indicated by GE to RGPPL all the machines are feasible to be restarted by March 2010. The doubling of power availability will ease power supply position in Maharashtra. With GoI according priority to RGPPL in domestic gas allocation from KG Basin, the power from the project shall be cheaper as compared to imported R-LNG. RGPPL has signed gas supply and purchase agreement with RIL recently.

Sources recalled that four gas turbines had experienced machine failure which severely affected the power generation. The failure of GT-2B after running 2841 hours on account of catastrophic failure of compressore blades led to outage from Jan-April 2007. GT-2A, which tripped after running for 8,803 hours due to failure of compressor blades, led to outage from January 2008 and it is yet to be revived.