 "GVK's Goindwal Sahib power project faces coal hurdles")
The Government of India's Inter-Ministerial Standing Linkage Committee in its meeting on June 21 had turned down the company's request for a permanent coal linkage to operate the project, which was declared commercial operation date (CoD) in the month of April.
The committee, instead, advised GVK management to obtain coal through special froward e-auction route to operate the plant.
"We are already doing it. But to run such a big plant in a sustained manner, there has to be an assured supply of coal," the company sources told Business Standard.
The captive coal block with mineable reserves of 52 million tonnes allocated to GVK in Jharkhand for Giondwal Sahib project was cancelled by the Supreme Court in September, 2014.
Following completion the company had achieved plant COD and the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) has accepted the same for Unit 1 with effect from April 6 and Unit 2 from April 16. But the Unit 1 could not sustain the continuity of operation beyond April 22 due to non-availability of coal, GVK said.
"The coal is procured for operation of Unit 1 and Unit 2 through e-auction. As the e-auction schedulers and supplies are not matching the plant's continuous operation schedule, plant is stranded without coal for operation," the company was quoted as saying in the minutes of the meeting. The committee also recorded the request for a permanent coal linkage made by the company.
The GVK Goindwal (Sahib) Limited, the subsidiary company of GVK group, had initially procured 500,000 tonnes of coal under the coal supply MoU to achieve CoD.
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However, the plant had to be shut down due to non-availability of coal later in the same month. Again the company had procured 484,000 tonnes of coal in two e-auctions, about 84,000 tonnes on April, 28 and 4 lakh tonnes on June 16 to restore the operations.
Following this, Unit 1 was restarted in the middle of July and the Unit 2 was about to be started. "We have to run the plant with the available coal stocks till the next round of e-auction is conducted some time in the month of August," a company official said.
"Management has obtained coal linkage for six months, taken opinion for running plant on imported coal, tied up for importing coal and is mulling other options such as, obtaining coal linkage locally and has filed petition with Punjab Electricity Regulatory Commission (PSERC) for re-negotiation of terms of power purchase agreement such as rate revision, approval for using imported coal etc. claiming force majeure and change in law as envisaged under the Power Purchase Agreement," the company management explained the travails in latest annual report in connection with Goindwal Sahib project.
GVK said it was also planning to apply for a suitable schedule-1 coal mines in the next auction, though the government is yet to come up with any schedule for auctioning of coal blocks to sell to private power companies.
In 2015-16 the three gas based projects, namely 464 Mw GVK Gautami Power Limited and 235 Mw phase-1 and 220 Mw phase-2 projects of GVK Industries Limited along with 330 Mw Alakananda Hydro Power project have recorded a revenue of Rs 963.87 crore as compared to Rs 290.40 crore in the previous year.
The increase was mainly due to the commencement of commercial operations of Alakananda project, according to the company. It was expecting a further upside in revenues on account of Goindwal Sahib operations.
The company's consolidated debt rose to Rs 27,432.91 crore at the end of March, 2016 as compared to Rs 25,198.75 crore as at the beginning of the financial year, according to the company annual report.