OTPC PLANT, Palatana,UDAIPUR January 15 (TIWN): Early in the morning of Thursday when the country have awaken to have a dip of Makar Sankranti , OTPC engineers and technicians will remain busy in the preparation for another trip in the plant. Once again a technical problem arose in the Purge Valve as it has not been working properly since Wednesday midnight , said a TIWN source. And quite naturally the plant will go for another trip on Thursday morning, the Makar Sankranti Day. A highly placed TIWN source in the OPTC told this correspondent on Wednesday midnight ," As of now the generation from OTPC is 150MW(up to11.30pm) as against 363MW .

The plant is now having some technical problems in Purge Valve as it is not responding properly. Quite naturally plant is to be put on trip on Thursday . Hopefully the production will resume from the evening. " The source also said tat the problem is that once there is a trip , plant needs at  least 24 hours time before it starts full fledged commercial production.

Talking to TIWN on wednesday, CMD of OTPC, Satyajit Ganguly had informed that  at about 4.40a.m on Tuesday, Palatana faced sudden trip off due to the heavy fog which led to the jam in filiter.  CMD tried to mean that such problem is a common in all the gas thermal plant and a problem which can be easily rectified. Interestingly the CMD did not mention about the technical snag occurred in Purge Valve. 
The sudden shutdown will again plunge the  state into severe shortage of power supply that can also result in long and frequent load-shedding for  2-3hrs on Thursday.  Due to continuous technical snags ONGC-Tripura Palatana Power Company (OTPC), has not been able to supply uninterrupted power supply which resulted frequent load shedding across Tripura. Electricity consumers in the  state are worst hit. 
       It is to be mentioned here that with in a week after the inauguration of the Commercial Generation of Unit-II of OPTC by PM Modi on 1st December 2014, production from Unit-II has been minimal till date.