Shanghai Electric’s 1,320 MW Thar coal-fired power plant’s first 660-megawatt unit has been connected to the national grid.
Federal Minister for Power Khurram Dastgir Khan announced the news on his Twitter account. The minister praised the addition of low-cost electricity generated from indigenous resources, noting that it resulted from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative.
Shanghai Electric sponsors two 660 MW ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants in Sindh’s Thar Desert Block-I. The project also includes an integrated coal mine with a capacity of 7.8 million tonnes per year.
As per another tweet retweeted by the Federal Minister of Power, the other 660 MW unit will be connected to the national grid on Monday (Dec 5), after which both units will begin contributing 1,320 MWs of electricity to the national grid collectively.
According to a source, the power plants will begin contributing electricity to the national grid for testing purposes before beginning commercial operations.
The power plants, according to the Thar Coal Block-1 Generation Co. (TCB-1), can provide affordable energy to four million households. The power plant is owned by TCB-1, a subsidiary of Shanghai Electric.
The minister told a press conference that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif formally inaugurated the 330 MW HUBCO Thar Coal Power Plant, increasing electricity generation from local Thar coal to 990 MW. He stated that people had begun receiving dividends from projects by Muhammad Nawaz Sharif in 2014. Since 2019, he added that local Thar coal has supplied up to 660 MW of electricity to the national grid.
He further said that another 1,320 MW Shanghai Electric Thar Coal Power Project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will begin generation before the next summer, helping to double electricity generation to 2640 MW.
The minister described Thar coal reserves as a blessing for the entire country, adding that the reserves were initially estimated to be 175 billion metric tonnes. He claimed that the Thar coal reserves covered an area of more than 100 square kilometers and were divided into 13 blocks.