Uzbekistan, Tashkent, November 3 / Trend, D. Azizov /
The State joint-stock company Uzbekenergo will speed up the $249.3 million refurbishment of the Angren thermal power station in the Tashkent district, Uzbekenergo told Trend on Thursday referring to the order of the Uzbek President.
The information reads that the order envisions measures to accelerate the project, and approves technical economic calculations and sources of funding of the station's refurbishment.
Under the document, the project launch date is being brought forward by a year and the station's refurbishment is expected to begin in early 2012, ending in the last quarter of 2014.
The refurbishment will see the construction of a 130-150-megawatt cogeneration power block for the burning of high-ash coal. As viewed by specialists, the coal burning at the power station will be increased from 20 per cent to 45 per cent as a result of the refurbishment.
The project is to be financed using $83.7 million of Uzbekenergo's own assets and $165.5 million of foreign loans and investments, including $112.5 million as a loan to be assigned by the Chinese Eximbank, Uzbekenergo reported.
The Angren thermal power station is one of two power stations in Uzbekistan partially operating using coal in winter, the peak heating season. The designed capacity of the station's eight power blocks totals 484 megawatts. The station was put into operation in 1957. It supplies power to the key industrial facilities and to population in the Tashkent district.
As reported earlier, Uzbekistan also oversees a project that envisions transition of the boilers of the Novo-Angren thermal station (with the designed capacity of 2100 megawatts) to year-round burning of coal and construction of the eighth power block, after technical refurbishment of the coal section Angren is over.
Currently, the first stage of the $73 million transition of the Tashkent district-based Novo-Angren thermal power station to year-round coal burning is being implemented.
The project of refurbishment of the Novo-Angren thermal power station is being carried out in parallel with the $154.4 million technical refurbishment of the coal section Angren. Once the project is over, coal production in this section will be increased up to 6.4 million tons in 2012 against 3.2 million tons in 2009.
At the moment, the Uzbek power system comprises 45 power stations with the total production capacity of more than 12,400 megawatts.
The official statistics reads that power output in Uzbekistan in January-September this year increased by 2.9 per cent against the respective period of 2010 up to 39.585 billion kWh.