Essar Power, a leading private power producer, has achieved an amazing feat of conserving over 2.5billion litres of water cumulatively during the past three years from FY18 to FY21 across its thermal power plants in the country. The specific water consumption of the plants are around 2.2 m3/MWh as against MOEF guidelines of 3.5 m3/MWh
With World Water Day celebrated on 22nd March every year, Essar Power seeks to focus attention on the global water crisis. Earth consists of 70% of water in wells, rivers, lakes, oceans, big dams, and streams but only 1-2 % water is suitable for human use. World Water Day theme was Valuing Water this year.
Water is one of the major requirements of a thermal power plant. As water scarcity is one of the major issues faced by most countries and in order to conserve this precious resource, the assets of Essar Power have been active in the area of water conservation.
“Water conservation is an extremely critical part of power generation and key to Essar Global Fund’s pledge to pursue investment with growth led by the principles of environment, sustainability and governance. We aim to further increase our water conservation in the coming years to much more than current levels,” said Mr. Kush, CEO, Essar Power.
The learning over time have been transferred to all the plants, thereby adding to synergy.
Essar has incorporated these learnings in design stage itself, and has pioneered water saving from the project implementation stage itself.
The company has undertaken major initiatives to conserve water including reutilization of water in clarifier sludge using a thickner. This process helps in recovering water from the sludge and is reused as raw water.
It also reutilizes water used in backwash of pressurized sand filters and softeners and recovers water from softener generation.
The company only uses recycled/waste water for horticulture at all its power plants, thus conserving considerable amount of fresh water in the process.
Cooling Tower blow down is used in the various process of coal and ash handling systems, which would be otherwise rejected as a waste water from the power plant.
Essar Power Hazira Ltd. (“EPHL”) has developed an in house cooling water programme and gradually increased its cooling tower COC from 4.5 to 7 thereby reducing the blow down quantity. The Company has also implemented various rain water harvesting measures by collecting the rain water through drains and used as a raw water.
The company’s plants have been winning awards from various prestigious organizations such as CII, FAME, APEX India, PHD Chamber in fields related to water conservation.
Water conservation efforts at Essar Power were internationally recognized when a case study was published in IFC sponsored “2030 Water Resources Group” based at Washington, USA.