China imports losing ground in India

[FairAndUnbiased]

I work in this field too and know this first hand. Chinese power plants are known to be cheap & quick delivery but of unreliable quality. Most of the IPPs who buy them are in for short term and want quick return on their investment and sourcing from China meets their purpose. Now the operators have realised that buying chinese stuff is not going to work-out even on short terms.

Now here is my question to you: why is Reliance industries spending 8 BILLION on this? As we all know, 8 billion isn't a small sum. You don't piss away 8 billion dollars for unreliable stuff, because if it breaks, that's 8 billion flushed down the toilet. This isn't some Indian roti shop that can cut down on chicken and add more flour.

Why is Electricite de France taking the risk of Chinese equipment if it did not meet French standards?

 

[shuntmaster]

I wonder how they manage to get orders even after the turbine failures in Amarkantak and westbengal

No one can compete with the chinese in terms of project costs and delivery schedules.. a typical 300-500MW coal fired power plant unit costs about Rs.150-250crores and 36-60months to build. Chinese companies can do it at half the price and time. Basically they do this by mass-manufacturing the same unit based on a design from their first project and then cutting corners with quality and performance guarantees. Normally a powerplants useful design life is 25-35years, whereas a typical chinese supplied plant needs to be written off after 10-15years maximum..

This is my personal experience of working for 4years in Beijing office of an European based electrical engineering company and also my interactions with the employees of lots of Indian power companies who have opened procurement offices in China.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

No one can compete with the chinese in terms of project costs and delivery schedules.. a typical 300-500MW coal fired power plant unit costs about Rs.150-250crores and 36-60months to build. Chinese companies can do it at half the price and time. Basically they do this by mass-manufacturing the same unit based on a design from their first project and then cutting corners with quality and performance guarantees. Normally a powerplants useful design life is 25-35years, whereas a typical chinese supplied plant needs to be written off after 10-15years maximum..

Another question: why is China itself not experiencing this sort of problem? After all, not surprisingly the largest market for Chinese power generation equipment is... China. There's no such problems in fast plant overhauls in China itself.

 

[shuntmaster]

Now here is my question to you: why is Reliance industries spending 8 BILLION on this? As we all know, 8 billion isn't a small sum. You don't piss away 8 billion dollars for unreliable stuff, because if it breaks, that's 8 billion flushed down the toilet. This isn't some Indian roti shop that can cut down on chicken and add more flour.

Why is Electricite de France taking the risk of Chinese equipment if it did not meet French standards?

Answer is, Chinese supplied plants are cheaper and fast delivery. Which means quicker return on investments for the power companies especially for companies like Reliance who have very ambitious short term goals.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Answer is, Chinese supplied plants are cheaper and fast delivery. Which means quicker return on investments for the power companies especially for companies like Reliance who have very ambitious short term goals.

Is there any quantitative support for your assertions? Because there is corroborating Reliance's claim of Chinese turbines at 90% capacity, above the 70% claimed by BHEL and the 60% slandered by BHEL.

ANHUI WENERGY POWER OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE CO., LTD

We have been assigning 50 key personnel for O&M service at Pingwei Power Plant Phase one 2×600MW generating units from March 6, 2004 to now. The two units’ average equivalent available factor is 91.75% for the last four years.

 

[shuntmaster]

Another question: why is China itself not experiencing this sort of problem? After all, not surprisingly the largest market for Chinese power generation equipment is... China. There's no such problems in fast plant overhauls in China itself.

Simple: These things don't get reported so openly in China. Another thing is, the problems of quality are largely overcome by quantity. On an average china commissions one power plant unit a week. The amount of installed power generation capacity in China is simply astounding. But the whole system is very inefficient and highly polluting.

 

[JayAtl]

Another question: why is China itself not experiencing this sort of problem? After all, not surprisingly the largest market for Chinese power generation equipment is... China. There's no such problems in fast plant overhauls in China itself.

OMG , no he did not ask why he never reads about china never experiencing any problem on these products. You are being brainwashed into believing that is true! ~ China never has any problems per the borg- it in fact censors any problems its products face. Chinese have no clue about lead in toothpaste shipped to the US or in the sheet rock imported or tainted chemicals in kids toys exported to the US because govt allows lead in Chinese toys .

 

[scorpionx]

Talking from mechanical point of view the hydraulic pumps in coal pulverizers which were supposed to deliver 200kg pressure cant even produce 90kg. so we had to replace them with indian ones. and guess what the chinese pumps costed Rs250000 per unit where as the indian ones costed only Rs75000 and working fine

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Simple: These things don't get reported so openly in China. Another thing is, the problems of quality are largely overcome by quantity. On an average china commissions one power plant unit a week. The amount of installed power generation capacity in China is simply astounding. But the whole system is very inefficient and highly polluting.

Sure they're reported. China has big penalties for failing to report. This isn't India where not reporting things gets you richly rewarded as happened in the Commonwealth games. China also has some of the highest efficiency steam turbines in the world at 46% efficiency. Proof:

China Going Supercritical

Talking from mechanical point of view the hydraulic pumps in coal pulverizers which were supposed to deliver 200kg pressure cant even produce 90kg. so we had to replace them with indian ones. and guess what the chinese pumps costed Rs250000 per unit where as the indian ones costed only Rs75000 and working fine

There you have it. RS 250000 per unit is much more expensive than 75000 per unit. So much for the allegations of "cheap". No, it is extremely expensive.

 

[scorpionx]

Sir, i slightly disagree with the cheapness issue. BHEL had cheaper rates than Dongfang in our next generating venture. I also regret buying an "extremly expensive" unit with no productivity.

 

[shuntmaster]

Is there any quantitative support for your assertions? Because there is corroborating Reliance's claim of Chinese turbines at 90% capacity, above the 70,/pij;.% claimed by BHEL and the 60% slandered by BHEL.

ANHUI WENERGY POWER OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE CO., LTD

Sorry, I dont have any numbers to quote or articles to support what I quoted. All this is from my personal first hand experiences and shared experiences from people working in the electric power industry. My personal experience with Qingdao based Shangdong Electric Power Co. (SEPCO-III) was not that good. My company was quoting the electrical distribution package to one of their gas fired power plants in the middle east. From my interactions with them, it looked like they were not interested the quality of the engineered products my European electrical engineering company was offering. Finally they placed the order on a local chinese electrical company who was know to supply inferior quality products and some products which didn't even meet the basic technical requirements.
I have no interaction with the Anhui power company, but I did interact with a few Anhu based Design Institutes who specialised in power plants. The common theme always was price over quality.

 

[shuntmaster]

Sir, i slightly disagree with the cheapness issue. BHEL had cheaper rates than Dongfang in our next generating venture. I also regret buying an "extremly expensive" unit with no productivity.

Yeah.. now Indian companies are also becoming very competitive in price terms. but the delivery problems still persists. The Indian engineering companies are working over their capacities and cannot even meet the present demand. They have their order logs fully booked for a next few years. Hence the IPPs who want to put up plants very quickly have to go to the Chinese suppliers who have both the capacity to meet the demand and also are cost competitive.

 

[shuttler]

sir, i work in a 300MW Dongfeng electric made thermal unit. we already had five siemens made units and one BHEL made.The performance of the chinese unit is not satisfactory atall and we have a PLF of 60% where as the other units have PLF more than 80%. the metallurgy of the turbine is also not as german standards.

if what you and the other foul-mouthed indians' bull sh*t about Dongfeng is anywhere 10% true, the company should be belly-up long time ago. It would not have grown into a sizeable international corporation now.

Dongfeng's sustaining ability to sell its products to many parts of the world for 2 to 3 decades is a strong testament of its quality!

Dongfang Electric Corp Ltd.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Sorry, I dont have any numbers to quote or articles to support what I quoted. All this is from my personal first hand experiences and shared experiences from people working in the electric power industry. My personal experience with Qingdao based Shangdong Electric Power Co. (SEPCO-III) was not that good. My company was quoting the electrical distribution package to one of their gas fired power plants in the middle east. From my interactions with them, it looked like they were not interested the quality of the engineered products my European electrical engineering company was offering. Finally they placed the order on a local chinese electrical company who was know to supply inferior quality products and some products which didn't even meet the basic technical requirements.
I have no interaction with the Anhui power company, but I did interact with a few Anhu based Design Institutes who specialised in power plants. The common theme always was price over quality.

SEPCO is a construction contractor. Reliance bought the components from a Chinese company (Shanghai Electric) and is building the plants with someone else. That's very different. You are talking about the quality of SEPCO's service and not the generator itself.

 

[scorpionx]

Sir, your language is far more different than my chinese friends whom i had an opportunity to work with. most those engineers were very polite and gentle unlike some of our chinese memebers here in pdf. what i posted was based on ground reality.
http://www.livemint.com/2009/03/.../Dongfang-turbine-fails-trial-r.html