Dabhol power plant's output will fall to its one-third from Wednesday midnight as two units of country's largest gas-fired electricity generating project have been shut down for maintenance inspection.

"The plant is producing 900 MW of power now. This will come down to 300 MW as we are shutting down two units for maintenance inspection," an official in Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt Ltd, the company that runs the Dabhol plant, said. 

The units are likely to be back in operation in 5-6 days.

Another unit, whose turbine tripped earlier this month, will be back in business by first week of December to enable the plant to generate 1,200 MW of electricity.

The gas turbine GT-3 has been repaired at Singapore, an official of the Ratnagiri Gas and Power, a joint venture of state-run NTPC Ltd [Get Quote]  and GAIL India Ltd [Get Quote], said.

The official said 5 million tons liquefied natural gas import terminal adjacent to the power plant was likely to be mechanically completed by January 2009.

"We will see the mechanical completion of the terminal by January but the breakwater will come up in 2011," he said.

Without the breakwater, the terminal can operate at just over 20 per cent of the design capacity of 5 million tons a year.

"Technical studies have stated that without breakwater, it is difficult for ships carrying LNG to dock at Dabhol for 7-8 months in a year," he said. 

"We are hopeful that we can operate the terminal at higher capacity. Petronet LNG's [Get Quote] Dahej terminal in Gujarat was also planned with a breakwater but when it began operations, the need to construct a breakwater was not felt," he said.

A breakwater helps stop high tides from smashing a ship into the port.

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