Operations and Maintenance (O&M) services of 425MW Nandipur Power Plant has been outsourced to M/s Hydro Electric Power System Engineering Company of China (HEPSEC) by the Govt. of Pakistan for a period of ten years and in the event that no major maintenance is required, the contractor would undertake two major inspections, whichever is later.
An agreement on long-term operation and maintenance of the plant was signed at Nandipur between Northern Power Generation Company limited (NPGCL), (a government owned corporate entity working under the management of the GENCO Holding Company Limited), and HEPSEC in Gujranwala.
According to the agreement, the contractor will be paid fixed and variable cost against the O&M services as per the agreement on the basis of the number of employees. Variable cost will be paid per unit. The government, however, has not unveiled the agreed cost of O&M. Nepra has already approved O&M cost in tariff determination of the project.
According to the officials of water and power ministry, Contractor will be 100 per rent responsible for plant efficiency and availability at all times. Contractor is bound to keep the plant operationalized as the agreement as Liquidated Damages (LDs) is part of the agreement.
According to an official statement, the decision to outsource the operation and maintenance of the Nandipur Power Plant is in pursuance of the recommendations of the regulator, and a policy decision by the government to outsource the operation and maintenance of new power plants to experienced international operators in line with prevalent industry practice in order to reduce expenditures, and to bring about latest and efficient practices in power plant management.
The Nandipur Power Plant has been fully operational since its COD in July 2015 and it is currently operating on furnace oil. Work is already under way to convert the plant’s operation to natural gas. To this end, 88KM pipeline is being laid and work is also ongoing on the plant site to convert the plant to gas operation. The plant’s conversion to gas operation, which is expected to be completed by the end of April 2017, will significantly improve plant performance, reduce operating costs, and result in overall improvement.
Ministry of Water and Power maintains that with the conversion, the generation capacity of the plant will increase from 425MW to 525MW. NPGCL through international competitive bidding invited experienced contractors to bid for the long-term operations and maintenance contract for the Nandipur Power Plant. After evaluation and scrutiny of the bids, HEPSEC’s bid was found to be the lowest responsive bid out of the four bidders.
