Chimney of Putrajaya Power Station.

Group photo in front the turbine hall 2, Putrajaya Power Station.

Transmission line in the Putrajaya Power Station distributing power to Putrajaya area.

By Faresa Azmi

In resonating to the needs of outcome-based culture in the professional engineering education, School of Engineering continuously play a dominant, yet adaptive role of promoting holistic knowledge in engineering concepts, exposure towards real-world engineering practice and needs for professional outlook. In this context, infusing extra-curricular activities outside the formal curriculum in the form of industrial site visits are essential in modernizing the outcome-based education.

School of Engineering coordinated a technical based site visit on 19th June 2019 to TNB Putrajaya Power Station (TNBPPS), Serdang, Selangor in an effort to provide greater clarity about various technical concepts for students towards theory being put into practice.

The visit coordinated by Ms Puteri and Ms Salina recorded a participation of 35 undergraduate students of all levels of the School’s program; accompanied by 6 lecturers.Mr Hakimi and Mr Farid, the power electrical engineers representing TNBPPS were at hand to provide and share information as the trip was dominantly geared to expose students to the technology, working mechanism of five (5) units of gas turbines of this thermal powered station which eventually generates power capacity of 625W. It was informed that TNBPPS was part of TNB’s plan to increase power generation capacity to meet Malaysia’s rising electricity demand in the early 1990s.

The Chief Engineer added that the current gas turbine plant consist of two units of 110MW and three units 135MW and have been used predominantly as prime mover for energy generation in all thermal power stations. In this connection, TNBPPS was earmarked as the peaking power plant serving the Klang Valley load center as its operating regime is of two shift cycles, operating between 12 and 16 hours daily mainly to meet the load demand during peak hours and to stabilize the grid line voltage.

Overall, the students gained insight of the whole plant right from the raw material (gas) procurement, processing, combustion and generation & transmission of electricity.

TNB’s social responsibility towards the environment was an evident by the adaptation of clean technology and stringently following by environmental safety guards of setting up ambient air quality monitoring stations to prevent air pollution.

Students provided positive feedback that this kind of industrial exposure helped them to absorb the theoretical aspects of Thermal Power Engineering more efficiently as well as a platform that expose them towards career opportunities in this sector.