“The entire project of 4,000 Mw may be considered to be developed in a phased manner- Stage-I (2x800 Mw) and Stage-II (3x800 Mw) or any other combination. Such phased manner of development shall facilitate the financial closures which involves a huge fund of Rs 25,000 crore. The load/demand of participating states will come in a staggered manner so that the load growth can be managed prudently with the upcoming generation,” Sangramjit Nayak, joint secretary (energy) wrote to the Union power ministry on behalf of Gridco.
The state government has also sought changes in the terms and conditions of the recently revised standard bidding documents (SBDs).
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“As the lead utility, Gridco shall have to obtain all kinds of approvals for land required for plant, coal mines and other required statutory approvals within 120 days of signing of power purchase agreement (PPA) which is extremely difficult. Thus, the condition precedent needs reconsideration and further analysis is to be made on the SBDs which may not be possible within the short span of time allowed at this stage,” Nayak said in the letter.
The Odisha Integrated Power Ltd (OIPL), a fully owned subsidiary of Power Finance Corporation (PFC) will conduct the bidding process for selecting the developer for the UMPP.
OIPL, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) formed for implementing the UMPP has been authorised by the Odisha government to take all necessary decisions that may be required for selection of the developer.
The decisions are to be taken by the SPV in accordance with the ‘Guidelines for Determination of Tariff by Bidding Process for Procurement of Power by Distribution Licensees’ issued by the Union power ministry under Electricity Act-2003.
Gridco Ltd has been appointed as the lead utility among all the utilities that have been allocated power from the Bhedabhal UMPP. As a result, it will discharge the obligations on behalf of all the individual entities.
The government of India recently scrapped the initial bids received from 20 power companies for setting up this UMPP since the bids were invited as per the previous standard bidding documents (SBDs). With the new SBDs finalised now, fresh bids for the Bhedabhal UMPP are expected to be invited in a week. Bigwigs in the power sector like NTPC, Tata Power, Adani Power, JSW Energy and Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL) had evinced interest in developing the UMPP.
The UMPP needs 3,100 acres of land in all. Odisha would get 1,300 Mw as its share from this project. Water for this UMPP has been allocated from the Ib river and check dams and barrages would be put up on the river to facilitate water drawal.
It may be noted that Meenakshi, Meenakshi-B and Dipside Meenakshi coal blocks have been allotted for the UMPP with a total reserve of 880 million tonnes.
Notification under Section 6 (1) of Land Acquisition Act has been issued for acquisition of private land totaling to 2,732.56 acres in six villages in Sundargarh district.