Coal

MHPS gains 12-year maintenance deal at coal-fired BLCP Power Station in Thailand

MHPS gains 12-year maintenance deal at coal-fired BLCP Power Station in Thailand
(Photo courtesy of BLCP Power. )

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems will continue to handle long-term maintenance duties for another 12 years at a Thai coal-fired power station it originally helped bring into operation 13 years ago.

MHPS and BLCP Power Limited agreed to an extension of the long-term maintenance agreement (LTMA) at the 1,400-MW BLCP Power Station. BLCP, located in the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate in Rayong Province of Thailand, includes two subcritical power units burning bituminous coal imported from Australia and Indonesia, according to reports.

The LTMA with MHPS covers major equipment including boilers, steam turbines and flue gas cleaning system which was built by MHPS. The company has had previous LTMAs of three, six and nine years at the BLCP Power Station.

The comprehensive LTMA includes regular inspections, equipment replacement, and efficiency improvements. The extension concludes in 2032, when the 25-year power purchase agreement with the Electricity Authority of Thailand is completed.

The signing ceremony, held at the MHPS head office in Yokohama earlier this month, was attended by BLCP Managing Director Yuthana Charoenwong and other company executives, with MHPS represented by President Ken Kawai.

The BLCP units burn about 3.64 million tons of coal annually. The station is installed with flue gas desulfurization, electrostatic precipitator, low NOx (nitrogen oxide) burner, wastewater treatment and other environmental management technologies.

Its planning and contract awards date back to the early part of this century.

(Rod Walton is content director for Power Engineering and POWERGEN International. He can be reached at 918-831-9177 and [email protected]).

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The Future of Coal-fired Generation is one of the featured Conference Workshop tracks which will be offered at POWERGEN International happening December 8-10 in Orlando, Florida. The POWERGEN 2020 call for abstracts is still open and seeing submissions on coal-fired projects.