CPHGC completes 1,320MW power plant

KARACHI: China Power Hub Generation Company (CPHGC) and General Electric (GE) on Thursday announced the successful completion of a power plant with 1,320 megawatts of production capacity in Balochistan.

“We are proud to deliver this project with agile execution and completed this work in cooperation with GE on schedule and on budget,” Zhao Yonggang, chief executive officer of CPHGC said in a statement.

“We are excited that this landmark project will play a significant role in helping Pakistan to deliver on its energy mix ambitions and help to tackle the electricity shortfall that is hindering Pakistan’s progress.”

Under an agreement signed in 2016, GE supplied the project’s engineering, procurement and construction contractors Northwest Electric Power Design Institute Co. Ltd. and Tianjin Electric Power Construction Company with two units. Each unit of 660 MW has supercritical steam turbine, generator and boiler. The project is expected to lighten up to four million Pakistani homes.

The project includes construction of the CPHGC power plant and a dedicated jetty at Hub began in March 2017 in the Lasbella district of Balochistan.

The CPHGC power plant, under a joint venture of China Power International Holding Limited with Hub Power Company is now commercially operational.

It is one of the infrastructure ventures supported under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a large development megaproject that aims to connect Gwadar port in southern Pakistan to Xinjiang, China’s northwestern autonomous region, through transportation and energy networks.

The project would help Pakistan diversify its energy mix, allowing a significant reduction in the cost of electricity generation in Pakistan, providing electricity to four million households in Pakistan. “The successful completion of CPHGC power plant underlines the strong collaboration among GE and its partners,” Massimo Gallizioli, chief executive officer of GE Steam Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey said.

“Together we brought the world’s best to power Pakistan - local project management with Chinese engineering expertise and GE power generation technologies that were developed by advanced research and development teams based in Europe and China.”

GE has been a leader in efficient steam power technology, driving the industry from supercritical to ultra-supercritical technologies for more than 100 years.

GE has supported the development of energy infrastructure for more than 50 years in Pakistan and GE-built technologies could generate the equivalent power needed to supply up to 30 percent of the country’s electricity.