The Cost of a unit from Norochcholai Coal power plant
The Ministry says the cost will be about Rs 7/kWh
Unfortunately they have not taken the Real costs to the consumers like.
Taxes and duty to be levied by GOSL on Coal imported.
The cost to the environment. The cost of medical expenses to be met by people around the plant due to escaping Coal dust, Hot exhaust gasses and Warm cooling sea water and CO2 Mercury etc. Only about 35% of the heat in Coal will be converted to Electricity at the plant and balance will heat up the Clean Pure Norochcholai and
Cost due loses in Transmission and the Capital cost of transmission has not been taken in to account properly.
Pollution due to leaching of stored Coal stocks and the effects on the ground water in the area etc.
Will the Power plant be operated as specified? Will our operators perform? What happened at Sapugaskanda Heavy Fuel fired diesel plant The unwanted non fuel residue was pumped into CEB's tanks and Large quantity of refuse collected at the centrifuges has to be stored our side in Leaking Barrels till they could be disposed(Delayed due to Political interference in Tenders) polluting the whole area. The waste processing plant was never maintained or even properly operated and the whole place got polluted in addition to pollution from the Refinery!
Take the case of the KKS cement factory which had the best of the precipitators for exhaust. It was poorly maintained and after few years of commissioning the plant started polluting the whole area up to 5KM radius which was covered with cement dust. The management was not allowed to replace the precipitators and the plants were running at large profit. They kept the Poor staff kept silent by giving them a bottle of gingili oil to apply to there head!
What happened at the Kelenitissa Steam plant? It was not possible maintain as per slandered. At one stage it was unsafe as per the German Manufacturers of the Boiler Drum. It is unsafe to operate a boiler without two different Boiler level indicators in working condition in the control room for many years only one was in working order. No one is advised to operate the boiler without the flame failure detection equipment of the boiler. Due to lack of funds this was never replaced or repaired. We were told this never worked as it was not trivialized. The plant was operated without same all the time we worked as operation staff. The Copies of operation and Maintenance Manuals of the plant which were handed over by the suppliers were lost only one copy was available in CEB and was kept locked up in the then DGM Generations room.
There were no permanent operation staff and they were brought down time to time when the plant had to be operated for the drought season Most of the Technical Minor grade employees were recruited from the area for obvious reasons and they are often found drunk in the evenings. Nothing could be done to them
Major engineering errors occurred in trying to reduce the time taken to clean the Boiler Oil Burning guns. Out of the four guns that were there two had it nozzle rotating clockwise and the other two anticlockwise. The original operation Maintenance practice was to remove the gun after reducing the load of the machine to 70% and then clean the nozzle every specified hour of operation. This takes more than 30 Minutes. Due to reasons of requirement of Higher power out put from the plant a spare gun was kept not realizing the fact that there were two different types of nozzle for the gun The direction of Rotation of Hot air arriving for combustion has to be posit to the direction of rotation of nozzle which sprays the oil for good missing and combustion. This resulted in Oil not burning properly and dripping to the floor and collecting there and burning slowly there with less air available. One fine day the plant was shut down after the night peak on a dry season. One shift engineer stayed behind and went to rest in the special air conditioned room. The other engineer went home before the end of the shift. There was FIRE in the Boiler uncontrollable with very big damage to the boiler and connected equipment. When the fire Brigade came to help they had little water and they could not couple to the fire fighting Nozzles available in the Power station as they were made in
All this are costs to the consumers. There was a second fire later as the defect was not detected. On stores verification we found that there were different types of Boiler gun nozzles and the wrong procedure corrected. There was long mitigation against the two Engineers and they had keep lawyers to defend themselves at high costs. There were two different Engineers Unions at that time and it was one union engineers finding fault on the engineers of the other union to which the unlucky two engineers belonged. Luckily these two engineers got exonerated. CEB spent large some of money in repairing the damage and in conduction the inquiry. Many Engineering Man hours were lost in the inquiry.
There will added cost of keeping 300MW and later 900MW of spinning reserves to keep the system stable
All these countries mentioned have there own cheap coal we will have to import. From
In US it is extremely difficult to get permission to put new coal plants. No new coal plants came in
Hope the public who are now more educated will not allow this type of things to repeat. But this will cost more to operate the plants and we may have to import foreign Management and Staff to operate this plant as a clean plant to be away from COSTLY local politics in Operation and Maintenance.
There are many more such hidden costs not included and the author in mentioning only the ECONOMIC costs. What will be the COMMERCIAL cost to the consumer and the COUNTRY is what matters
The Costs of Rushed Emergency Power the Independent Private Power Projects with very Costly Commercial Loans which used large quantity of imported costly diesel for all these years(20) also has to be added to the cost of Coal Plant as it coasted the country when this plant got delayed.
The lack of experienced Operators and Bad Maintenance Practices will add costs to the units generated..
The fights between Electrical and Mechanical engineers of the CEB also will add costs to the unit and there could be premature failure of the plant taking place. All this will add to the cost of unit!
Using these data we can get the real costs.
From 2009 Coal Statistics http://www.dme.qld.gov.au/mines/coal_statistics.cfm
| | | |
| | March | Quarter |
| | 2008 | 2009 |
| Country | AUD$ Per Tonne | AUD$ Per Tonne |
| Hard Coking Coal | $107.80 | $374.33 |
| Soft Coking Coal | $81.69 | $221.59 |
| Thermal Coal | $68.74 | $156.26 |
The State of
Monthly coal statistics - March 
Download (642 kB) 
Download (123 kB)
Cost of Coal at Norichcholai will be cost FOB in Australia+ transport+ Tax and duty* by GOSL+ Loss of business to Colombo port= Aus$ 156=($125/ton +$15)+38.2% Tax and duty+10%loss of business to CMB Port $(125+15)X1.382X1.1=$212/ton cost/unit for fuel=8.9US cents/kWh
(Therefore, at the official discount rate of 10 percent, the capacity cost of the project will be 1.77 UScts/kWh. The present estimated price of coal is about 100 USD/tonne delivered to Norochcholai, and hence it will have a fuel cost of 4.2 UScts/kWh.
The maintenance cost to run the power plant, inclusive of meeting all the environmental standards will be about 1.25 UScts/kWh. Therefore, the economic cost of electricity produced in this power plant will be 7.24 UScts/kWh. If oil prices reach 140 USD/barrel as they did last July, coal prices may also double, and then this cost will increase to 11.42 UScts/kWh.)
*Please see
Tariff Calculator Tariff Guide http://www.customs.gov.lk/home_page.htm
| H.S. Hdg. (1) | H.S. Code (2) | | Description (3) | Customs Duty | Unit of Qty. (6) | Rates of Other Levies | ICL/SLS (13) | ||||||
| Pref. (4) | Gen. (5) | VAT (7) | PAL (8) | SRL (9) | SUR (10) | Cess (11) | Excise (12) | ||||||
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 27.01 | | | Coal; briquettes, ovoids and similar solid fuels manufactured from coal. | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | - | Coal, whether or not pulverised, but not agglomerated : | | | | | | | | | | |
| | 2701.11 | -- | Anthracite | (PK)Free (IN)Free (SF)Free | Free | kg | 15% | 3% | 1.5% | 15% | | | |
Total duty due for the Import of Coal will be 38% excluding Loss of revenue tax for the Coal by CMB Ports
Already Oil price gone up to $70/B. It is increasing and the predictions are it will go to the value suspected by author.. He has assumed a price $100/ton for coal at Norichcholai. The March price of Coal as per Statistics from Australian Coal Board is US$125/ton and the price of oil was very much lower then!. When this arrives in Srilanka we have to pay shipping charges, all the duties by GOSL which stands as it is now at more than 32%, and any charges by Port Authority of CMB who could charge for loss of revenue to the Ports as CEB will use its own Coal unloading facility at the Plant. So at today's prices as per Calculations showed a unit from this Coal plant now will NOW cost almostRs12/kWh.
And may be at the time of commissioning of this plant if the oil price doubles the Cost of Production of a unit could go to more than Rs 20/kWh. This is what it will cost the Customer finally. So the rosy picture put forward now will not hold water. We have to wait and see. To avoid this we have to learn to conserve energy.
Total cost/unit at March 09 Rates of Coal, (Oil was cheaper then only $35/B and today is higher than $68/B)
Cost/kWh in March price = 8.9+1.77+1.25=11.92 US cents/kWh or if oil price doubles by the time the Plant comes into operation.
The costs could be17.8+1.77+1.25=20.8UScents/kWh (as per there own calculations)
The actual costs can be very much higher than this Rs 21/kWh at the time of commissioning of the plant!
This may be the actual cost to the consumer at the time opening of the Coal plant! “(This may be the actual cost when plant is commissioned and will increase rapidly when plant ages)"
The lack of discipline among the operation and Maintenance staff of CEB, the Union fights, lack of coordination between the Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in CEB will add more costs. A person who has experience in having worked in CEB’s Thermal plants will know the realities. With Large size plant in the grid for Stability and continuity of supply we may have to have Hydro or costly Gas Turbines running as spinning reserves all the time. The Coal plant will be operated at its full load most of the time as a base load station and we may waste water in Hydro m/c and costly liquid fuel in running inefficiently the Gas Turbines at low load. All these costs have to be [aid by the consumer.
Please also consider the loss to the country in the delay in staring the Coal plant. We were forced to go for Emergency Power and High priced commercial loan funded Independent Power Projects and the fuel imported for these plants all this time. No wonder we have the highest tariff in this part of the world
One could say that all this costs will have to be also added to the unit cost not forgetting the cost to the environment including the medical expenses that the GOSL has bear for Poor Population around the project.
Going for renewable Power like in
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