The Hindu Business Line : Govt to focus on setting up mega thermal stations

WITH the ongoing fuel shortage taking its toll on the power sector, the Ministry of Power has decided to shift its thermal generation strategy in favour of setting up mega thermal stations of around 3,000 to 4,000 MW capacity, either along the coastline or at pithead sites for supplying power to more than one State.

Following a review meeting here on generation capacity addition chaired by the Power Minister, Mr P.M. Sayeed, the Ministry has directed the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to identify coastal and pithead sites for setting up these mega thermal stations.

The CEA has been asked to complete the exercise over the next three months.

"The availability of fuel for thermal projects is becoming a major constraining factor in the development of new projects. The move in favour of setting up large inter-State stations, either near the coastline if imported fuel is to be used or at pit-head sites in case domestic coal is the fuel, will help leverage economies of scale and prevent a large-scale fuel crisis in the future," a Power Ministry official said.

The Ministry has drawn up a programme for capacity addition to the tune of 11,500 MW by ten private power projects, which are being monitored by an inter-institutional group. It was also decided that a Co-ordination Meeting of the Secretary (Power) and Secretary (Coal) would be held shortly to sort out pending issues relating to coal supply for the 567 MW Rosa Thermal Project near Singrauli in UP and issues relating to allocation of coal linkage for the 300-MW Pathadi Thermal Power Project in Chattisgarh.A monthly co-ordination meeting of the Secretary (Power) and Secretary has also been scheduled to look into issues relating to environmental clearance for the 1,000-MW Karcham Wangtoo Project in Himachal Pradesh. A co-ordination meeting of the Secretary (Power) and the Secretary (Petroleum and Natural Gas) has also been scheduled to review and sort out issues relating to the supply of gas to some projects coming up in Andhra Pradesh and for the procurement of LNG for the Dabhol Power Project and the gas-based projects in Gujarat.

According to an official release, it was also decided that as a general planning guideline, States should plan to meet their demand growth through a combination of power from central PSUs (about 50 per cent of the overall requirement) and the remaining from projects to be set up by the State utilities themselves or through independent power producers (IPPs).

The Ministry has also decided to call a meeting of developers of IPPs to ascertain their problems and impress upon them the need for timely tying up of issues such as equity.

The Ministry has also decided to ask States to finalise their action plan for procuring power to meet their requirements in line with load projections, particularly in case of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh where the projected load growth is comparatively higher. It was suggested that these States should be asked to take advantage of the recently issued guidelines on competitive bidding to procure power through tariff-based bidding, the release said.

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