LAHORE: Financial bids of three technically responsive bidders were opened at the Wapda House for procurement of six generating units with generation capacity of 135-megawatt each. These units will be installed at Mangla Hydel Power Station as part of Mangla Refurbishment Project.

During the previous bidding process for two units, which was annulled by Wapda, the lowest responsive bid price for one unit was Rs2.377 billion, which has now decreased to Rs1.712bn. At the time of the first tendering, Alstom Hydro France — the lowest responsive bidder — was debarred by the World Bank.

Resultantly, Wapda cancelled the tender and initiated the tendering process afresh. By the time, the sanction imposed on Alstom was lifted and it again participated in the tendering, financial bids of which were opened at the Wapda House the other day.

In addition to Alstom Hydro France, Voith Hydro Germany and Andritz Hydro Austria were bidders in the second tendering. The fresh bidding for procurement of six units is expected to benefit the national exchequer by about Rs4bn as the price of one turbine is lower by Rs665 million.

In the second tendering, Wapda adopted a fast-track approach by inviting tenders for six generating units. In addition to saving of Rs4bn in the cost of the units, Wapda will also be able to complete refurbishment of six units in five years by adopting the fast-track approach.

It is pertinent to mention here that the refurbishment project will increase the generation capacity from 1,000MW to 1,310MW.

The existing Mangla Hydel Power Station has 10 generating units, having generation capacity of 100MW each with a useful life of 30 years extendable up to 35 years. The first unit was commissioned in 1967. Despite completion of their useful life long ago, all units installed at Mangla Hydel Power Station have still been working efficiently and generating electricity in accordance with their installed capacity due to operational skills of Wapda engineers and technical personnel and effective maintenance of these units.

In order to benefit from additional 2.88 million acre feet (MAF) of water and 40 feet additional water head available with completion of Mangla Dam Raising Project in 2009, Wapda planned to refurbish the existing Mangla Hydel Power Station. Besides, the use of latest technology was also one of the factors to make plans for optimising generation capacity of Mangla Hydel Power Station.

Mangla Refurbishment Project will be implemented in various phases, wherein the generating units will be refurbished by closing down one tunnel (two generating units) at a time. First two units will be refurbished by the year 2018, the next two by 2019 and the other two by the year 2020. By the year 2022, all the 10 units will be refurbished to complete Mangla Refurbishment Project.

The approved PC-I cost of the Project is Rs52.224bn. It is worth mentioning that the USAID is providing $150m as grant for the purpose, while rest of the amount will be arranged by Wapda through loans.

Subsequent to the opening of financial bids, member (power) Badrul Munir Murtiza briefed Wapda Chairman Zafar Mahmood on the matter.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2015