Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) is going to have the electricity supply from its 560 megawatts Combined Cycle Power Plant (CCPP) project at Bin Qasim, by the mid of next year. As two more gas-based turbines has reached the city from France completing the three turbines of the plant, the supply from the important project would be started by June 2011, official sources in KESC said.
According to the sources first turbine and associated auxiliaries have already arrived while the installation of different parts of the plant would be started next month. They said that the project containing total four turbines out of which three was gas based while another one was steam turbine.
"The three gas turbines have been obtained from GE, France, and the steam turbine will come from HARBIN, China. After the completion of installation, the first turbine will start providing electricity to the KESC power network in June 2011, second in July, third in August on the open cycle the same year while the steam turbine from China will start in March 2012 in combined cycle mode," they added.
Through a statement Tabish Gauhar, CEO of KESC, said "With this unprecedented investment into the private energy sector of the country, we now stand vindicated in front of our valued consumers who can see that our commitment to enhance our generation capacity has come true. This is a great moment in KESC's history and this will open a new era in the private energy sector."
It is to mention here that, the World Bank had sanctioned at least Rs 27 billion for the project. Beside the utility had also loaned Rs 8 billion from a local banking consortium as mobilisation charges for the project.
Though the project was earlier planned to start electricity generation by 2010, it with the delay of almost one year was expected to start supplying power to the city by 2011. The agreement with the Chinese firm, for the project was signed by the previous management of KESC in June 2008.