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China’s power company Shanghai Electric Group Company announced on Monday that the Thar Block-1 integrated coal mine and power project (Thar Project) in Pakistan officially entered commercial operation on 5 February 2023.
The thermal power project’s two 660-megawatt (MW) supercritical units passed the reliability run test successfully after 168 hours of full-load operation, the Shanghai-listed firm said in a statement.
The Thar Project will deliver about nine billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to the local grid annually, fulfilling the power demands of nearly four million households.
The project is Shanghai Electric’s first Build-Own-Operate (BOO) project, developed, constructed and operated with a total investment of nearly $3 billion, said Donghai Meng, Director CEO of Thar Coal Block-I Power Generation.
Construction of the project began in March 2019.
The statement said the plant has a total capacity of 1,320 MW and is supported by an open-pit coal mine that produces 7.8 million tons of lignite (brown coal) annually.
(Writing by P Deol; Editing by Anoop Menon)