Basin Bridge Gas Turbine Power Station is a state-owned gas fuel-based power plant located in

Basin Bridge Basin Bridge Junction is a station on the Chennai Suburban Railway and serves the locality of Basin Bridge, the confluence on the Otteri Nullah and Buckingham Canal, in Chennai, India. The station is located at the southern end of the 'diamo ...

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

. It has a capacity of 120 MW and is operated by the

Tamil Nadu State Electricity Board Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (abbreviated as TNEB) is a power generation and distribution company owned by Government of Tamil Nadu, India. It was created as a regulated monopoly under section 131 of the Electricity Act (2003) as a successor o ...

History

The plant was constructed as a 120-MW gas turbine power plant with four units, each with a capacity of 30 MW, the plant with all the four units was commissioned in February–March 1996. The power station was built at a cost of about 400 crores. The first two units were supplied by Overseas Economic Co-operative Fund, Japan, while the third and fourth units were from

BHEL Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is an Indian central public sector undertaking. It is under the ownership of Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India. It is based in New Delhi, India. Established in 1956, BHEL is India ...

. The plant is run and maintained by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) and is normally used during peak hours (06:00 to 09:00 hours and 18:00 to 21:00 hours).

Operations

The units can be operated by various fuels, such as

naphtha Naphtha ( or ) is a flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture. Mixtures labelled ''naphtha'' have been produced from natural gas condensates, petroleum distillates, and the distillation of coal tar and peat. In different industries and regions ' ...

and

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbon d ...

(dual-fuel system), and the starting fuel used is high-speed diesel (HSD). However, due to non-availability of natural gas/LNG in Chennai, the units are operated on naphtha fuel. From 20 January 2010, the units are run also as synchronous condenser to supply reactive power to the grid for better voltage profile and system stability. The plant is operated in open cycle mode. The cost of generation of power at the plant was 9.72 per unit.

Capacity

Incidents

On 6 March 2000, a fire broke out at around 21:00 hours at Unit IV of the power station, which was put out by more than 20 fire tenders and Metrowater tankers. Initially, smoke emanated from the reduction gear compartment used to reduce the speed of the machine. At the time of the event, three of the four units were functioning, generating 90 MW of power. All the units were switched off as a precautionary measure until the fire was put out. There was neither any causality nor any loss of power generation.

References

External links