This is the brief of Performance improvement in Captive Power Plant of Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd. starting from the year 2002. The Plant is situated at Korba City of CG state. This case study is after the BALCO was disinvested in 2001. The CPP was backbone of BALCO, as there was only one CPP for main Aluminium Smelter (The then Plant-1).
Brief of Plant:-
270 MW, 67.5×4 Turbines and elect. Generators, 4 nos. of Steam generators (Boilers), Thermal coal Fired CPP with COAL Handling and storage & Electrostatic precipitators…A standard configuration of Steam power plant.
Supplying power to BALCO main smelter.
ISSUE FACED-This plant could never reach its designed capacity of 270 mw.
Laying short on power, the smelter wasn’t reaching its designed capacity of one lakh tons per annum.
Brief story…
How it surpassed its designed capacity of 270 mw.
The earlier O&M AGENCY which was for almost 17 to 20 years with BALCO could only prove that this plant would never reach its design.
What happened after Take over by BALCO TEAM in 2002….
This case history is a story of
- PASSION
- MOVE FORWARD
- CALL BEYOND DUTY
- CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT
- ASSET OPTIMIZATION
- ORGANIZATION RESTRUCTURING
- ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The then Business Head studied the underlying Passion of the current team and separated the team members who wanted to take this challenge of current operations at 220 mw to reach 270mw. This was a major step to form a creative and blade running team. It did happen that after two weeks of this action almost everybody joined the Blade running team. The team believed that there is always a scope for improvement even after the theoretical end comes up.
The assessments were carried out why the CPP couldn’t reach its designed level by the erst while agency. All the left out documents were studied by BALCO Blade running team only to find out that this documentation was clearly stating the inefficiency of system, machines and overall Asset of CPP. The erst while agency proved in various documents the inefficient machines only and hence there was no implementation of any fruitful solution to touch 270mw. The four machines were not available one time or the other either on account of Generator’s break down or due to longer shutdowns.
BALCO SMELTER was starving for power and investors were bleeding because of low operational level on smelter as well as CPP.
The blade running team took around six months time to find out most probable causes of low level operations in CPP. The causes were
- Low steam generation
- Long time unmaintained machines giving frequent breakdowns.
- Unsafe operations.
- Plant availability factor and Plant load factor was very poor.
- Coal supply was from nearest coal yard of bigger govt. power plant .The priority for BALCO PLANT was any way lower in getting fuel supply from that yard.
- The erst while agency was proving that generators were not up to the mark and lacking the level. This was a misnomer kind of thing.
The blade running team did following with the help of the then management
- Installed a new boiler and made a common steam header to boost the steam supply to turbines. The new boiler was without a FEED PUMP as any other boiler pumps could be used to fill any other boiler. It was also a common water header.
- Cut the standard shutdown time of one unit from 32 days to 9 days.
- Augmented and monitored the maintenance teams of Mechanical and electrical & Instruments which brought back the availability of CPP.
- Stepped up the safety standards in switch yard/boilers and coal plant.
- The then management permitted to separate the coal supply form nearest yard and setup its own yard and unloading plant. Wagon tippler was installed. This yard was able to handle four rakes per day at its minimum of operation. This separation gave a benefit of continuously coal supply and storage.
- The team proved that the generator transformers were actually above the required capacity. The generators were being operated above designed reactive level, which was brought to correct level by installing the VAR supply equipments at Main Balco plant. This brought the generator temperature within limits of design and power factor could be maintained properly.
- The Cooling tower was augmented to bring the turbines temperature further low so that few more MWs could be obtained.
- The business Head could make the operations a BUSINESS of Power supply.
The cpp came to 98.1% load factor and with high availability supplying continuous power to BALCO SMELTER. In turn This CPP became a net power exporter.
Later the complete operation was made cost effective and on a proper explicit business plan and Asset optimization with safety as part its Business plan.
The organization was redesigned as Flatter structure with Asset management at its heart.
The plant after around 18 months of practice touched 285 mw the minimum operation level was average 267 to 269 mw.
The report writer thanks the Passionate Team of CPP. From which later the operations and maintenance teams wer formed for 540 MW and other power projects of Vedanta.
Later Smelter also surpassed its designed capacity on One Lakh tons per annum with better power back up from CPP.
THIS CASE HISTORY CLEARLY SHOWS THE PASSION OF THE TEAM WITH CHALLENGE TAKING SPIRIT AND A BELIEF IN CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT.
Sharad K Goel
The then Business Head (CPP)