BHEL inaugurates instrument calibration centre in Noida

New Delhi, Mar 14: As part of its ongoing capability upgradation and capacity expansion programme, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) today inaugurated a state-of-the-art instrument calibration centre with an investment of Rs 3.2 crore in Noida.

Established as part of an MoU with Government, the centre will help in enhancing the precision and accuracy of Performance Guarantee Test of thermal sets of various ratings, thereby supporting the company's efforts to meet its capacity addition target during the 11th Five Year Plan.

The centre was formally inaugurated by BHEL's Chairman and Managing Director Ashok K Puri today.

BHEL conducts Performance Guarantee (PG) Tests of thermal sets ranging from 60 Mega Watts (MW) to 500 MW to prove the equipment capacity and efficiency.

Such tests are also carried on smaller sets as required in individual contracts. These tests are done in line with national and international codes such as ASME, DIN, BS and IEC.

As these tests are done to prove equipment performance, the instruments used demand a very high degree of accuracy.

The present Electricity Act and Regulatory Commission requirements have placed greater emphasis on maintaining operational efficiency and availability from power stations for tariff realisation.

Keeping this in view, for conducting precise PG tests, the repeatability and accuracy of the test instruments is to be calibrated with high precision before each site test is taken up, a company statement said.

Therefore, calibration requirements are much more stringent than the test instrumentation.

In addition to meeting exacting requirements of calibration, this facility will reduce the turn around time for calibration of precision PG Test Instrumentation, thereby enabling PG testing of more projects, the statement added.

Prior to the setting up of this centre, such calibration facilities were available only in the National Physical Laboratory and a few Standardisation Testing Quality Certification (STQC) laboratories of the Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India.

Aimed at gearing up to meet the country's capacity addition targets towards the agenda of providing 'Power to all by 2012', BHEL is investing more than Rs 1,200 crore for holistic modernisation and capacity expansion of its facilities from 6,000 MW per annum at present to 10,000 MW per annum.

BHEL also has plans to further increase its capacity to 15,000 MW as required by the country's power sector in the eleventh five-year plan.

UNI