Captive power generation picking up in Punjab

The private players in Punjab are making investments in captive co-generation power projects to meet the power supply deficit.

The power generated by them will not only help them in saving the input costs but will also help them in earning extra revenue by selling surplus power to the state electricity board.

Punjab has the highest per capita consumption of power in the country at 972 units, as compared to the national average of 700 units.

Also, as against the state's total generation capacity of 6,088 Mw, the present demand in the state is of 9,000 Mw. There is a shortage of around 800 MW in Punjab during peak season.

"Especially the SMEs are unable to honour their export commitments due to power shortage during peak season, and incur heavy losses," said Ashwani Kohli, an industrialist.

Already there are 37 companies in the private sector in different categories, like sugar, paper and distillery, which have an installed capacity of 221.95 Mw to generate power through bagasse, agri-waste etc.

Also, 181.45 Mw captive (for own consumption) and co-generation (sells to state electricity board, uses rice husk, bagasse, etc, for power generation) power projects are under installation or in process of commissioning in 14 companies.

At present, the Punjab electricity board purchases 40-45 Mw per day from companies. Gujarat Ambuja Cements Ltd, Chandigarh Distillers & Bottlers Ltd, Amritsar-based Khanna Paper Mills and Rana Sugars Ltd are few of the companies supplying electricity to the state board.

By the end of this financial year, the private developers will be able to generate 440 Mw of power and will sell more than 100 Mw of power to the state electricity board.

Speaking to Business Standard, an official of Lakshmi Energy & Foods Ltd, which is installing 30 Mw of power generation unit, said, "We are going to use 4 Mw of power for our own consumption while the rest will be sold to the state electricity board."

The cost of setting up a 1 Mw captive power generation unit works out to around Rs 4-6 crore while the same is reduced when putting up higher capacity.

There are proposals to set up co-generation projects having capacity 14 Mw of power by players like JCT mills Ltd, Phagwara and Nectar Lifesciences Ltd.

Besides these co-generation power projects, PEDA (Punjab Energy Development Agency) is corresponding with four more companies namely, K B Solvents (Barnala), Punjab Riceland (Tarn Taran), Amritsar Swadesh Textile Corporation (Amritsar) and Abhisek Industries (Ludhiana).

Even the state government is planning to set up co-generation facilities at seven existing sugar mills in the state. The state government has proposed to install co-generation capacity of 11-12 Mw in each sugar mill