CHENNAI: The `waste to power' plant at the Koyambedu Wholesale Market complex, which is to be formally commissioned shortly, has started feeding power into the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board grid.

The plant, using the bio-methanation technology to generate power from vegetable wastes, will be the first of its kind in the country. Until now, power plants used to convert waste from poultry farms or slaughterhouses.

The full capacity of the plant is 250 kW of power a day, generated from 30 tonnes of vegetable waste. At present, the plant operates only for four or five hours a day using about 15 tonnes of waste. This means about 20 kW is being fed into the grid daily.

Considerable savings

"The power generated by the plant can meet only a fraction (about one-seventh) of the Koyambedu Market's needs. But it would still bring considerable savings," said an official from the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), which is in charge of the market's management.

The 4,800 units (equal to 250 kW) of power generated by the bio-methanation plant will be sold to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board at Rs 3.15 per unit and the buy-back price from TNEB is Rs. 5.80.

Once the plant is fully functional, a saving of about Rs. 4 lakhs can be made every month. Asked why the market could not directly use the power it produced instead of feeding it into the TNEB grid, the official explained, "The cost of setting up infrastructure for the market to directly consume the power would run into crores. Hence, we have to use the grid." Even after the biomethanation plant is commissioned, all of the 110 tonnes of waste from the 2,500 fruit, vegetable and flower wholesale shops in the Koyambedu market cannot be used to produce energy. The plant can take in only the vegetable waste that can be finely ground. The plant cannot take excessively high fibre content. Hence, about 70 per cent of the waste will still have to go the city's garbage dump in Kodungaiyur.

Solid waste disposal

In the last few months, the disposal of solid waste from the market has been an acute problem and mounds of garbage lay decomposing as the contractor appointed for the removal was not up to the task of clearing it. The CMDA has given the contract to a new company — Venkateswara Builders — since the beginning of this month.

With the commissioning of the biomethanation plant, it is expected that at least a part of the bio-degradable waste can be put to effective use as a non-conventional source of energy.

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