Chennaittes could heave a sigh of relief from the acute power crisis as the first unit of the 500 MW Vallur thermal power project is all set for commissioning on April 14, coinciding with the Tamil new year day.
Official sources said the test run of the first unit of the 1,500 MW power plant, promoted by the TNEB and the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in north chennai was successfully carried out on Friday and 50 MW of power was generated during the test run.
The second unit (1,000 MW) of the plant, being built at an estimated cost of more than Rs5,000 crore, would be ready for commissioning in couple of months after next month. The first stage should have been completed by December 2011 and the second in March this year, but got delayed due to various reasons.
When the two units are commissioned, the state would get 1,125 MW of power (75 per cent of the 1,500 MW). This would go a long way in tackling the power crisis of the state, which was facing a shortage of 4,000 MW.
chief minister J Jayalalithaa had told the state Assembly that the original deadline for commissioning the first unit was October 2011, but got delayed as the previous DMK regime failed to monitor the execution of the project properly.