LAHORE: The 1,320MW coal-fired Hubco Power Plant has been connected with the national grid after the National Transmission and Despatch Company completed a new 500kV transmission line.

The line will also enable the company to evacuate power from its existing plant to the national grid, according to an official source.

The new coal-fired plant is being constructed under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Since the work on the project was launched last year, its first unit of over 400MW is set to start generation in December.

“Our engineers successfully connected the plant with the national grid on Tuesday (July 24) after they redesigned the transmission line, evacuating power already from the existing Hubco plant. And finally they connected the under-construction Hubo plant with the national grid by originating a new 500kV line from the newly designed line connected with the existing plant,” a senior NTDC official told Dawn on Thursday.

Talking about connecting the under-construction Trimmu Power Plant (Jhang, Punjab) with the national grid, the official said the company had completed the project within a shortest period.

The NTDC was to lay two 220kV double circuit transmission lines from 220kV Toba Tek Singh Grid Station to Trimmu plant. “Under the schedule, we were supposed to accomplish this task by next month.

But we completed both 220kV lines (each having capacity to evacuate 750MW) on July 20, about a month before the deadline of August 15 by making the lines energised and available at the gate of the Trimmu plant,” he claimed.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2018