A.V. Krishnan, Executive Director, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Tiruchi, flagging off lorry with ceiling girders for the country’s first 800 MW Super Critical Thermal Power Station at Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh from Salem Automech Private Limited on Monday. — Photo: Special Arrangement

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has dispatched ceiling girders from its ancillary industrial unit located at Salem for the country’s first 800 MW Super Critical Thermal Power Station being erected at Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh by the Andhra Pradesh Power Development Company Limited.

A.V. Krishnan, Executive Director, BHEL, Tiruchirappalli, flagged off the four trailers loaded with four ceiling girders, weighing a total of 116 tonnes from Messrs Salem Automech Private Limited at a function organised on Monday. Mr. Krishnan urged the industries in and around Salem to increase their scale of operations to achieve an annual growth rate of 30 to 35 per cent to utilise the opportunities in today’s power sector.

He also wanted BHEL’s subcontractors to take up their own material procurement, instead of getting it from BHEL and developing skills to develop basic drawings to detailed drawings on their own so as to achieve industrial maturity. He expected that this would help BHEL in loading them PGMA (Product Group Main Assembly)-wise instead of component-wise.

As the production through outsourcing increases every year and would reach the level of 7 lakh tonnes in the next two years, he insisted on the ancillary units buying their own materials to avoid BHEL engaging in unproductive material accounting, cutting, sending and as a result, a huge traffic causing public nuisance on the Thanjavur – Tiruchirappalli highway.

“BHEL is executing a contract to install the country’s first two 800 MW-rating supercritical units in technical collaboration with Alstom at Krishnapatnam. For this, it has engineered a six-girder arrangement to evenly distribute the ceiling load to the girders instead of the usual practice of four-girder arrangement. The new design has improved the depth of the girder from 3.8 metres to 4.5 metres, resulting in considerable reduction in weight,” he said.

C.S. Ramachandran, General Manager, Commercial and Marketing (Fossil Boilers), G. Ramakrishna, GM, Outsourcing, BHEL, Rajappa Rajkumar, president, BHELSIA, K. Mariappan, president, Salem District Small and Tiny Industries Association, J. Kannan, Head, Quality, BHEL and M.V. Sellamuthu, MD, Salem Automech, spoke. S. Rajesh Kumar, Director, Salem Automech, proposed a vote of thanks.

BHEL has so far bagged orders for supply of supercritical boilers of 800 MW capacity from APPDCL (two units) and Raichur Power Corporation Limited (two units) and of 660 MW capacity from NTPC for its Barh project (two units) and Prayagraj Power Generation Company Limited for its Bara (UP) project (three units)

Source: THE HINDU