3 UMPPs to go under hammer by March: Goyal

Government will auction three ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) by March, including Tilaiya and Cheyyur entailing investments of Rs 80,000 crore, Power Minister Piyush Goyal has said.
"As regard the bid document for UMPP on domestic coal, we already had inter-ministerial consultations and hopefully in a month's time we will get Cabinet approval for new documents. So I will still try to come out before March with at least two or three UMPPs and may be other two by June," Goyal told PTI.
Asked about the projects, he said: "It will be a mix of old and new UMPPs. For example, in Bihar we have committed to do a UMPP in Banka. Probably we try and bid that out of the state government. We could consider Tilaiya, Cheyyur in Tamil Nadu and Bedabahal UMPP in Odisha."

The investment for an UMPP of 4,000 MW has been revised from Rs 20,000 crore to about Rs 27,000 crore each recently on basis of rise in the price of coal and land.
The bidding for Tilaiya UMPP in Jharkhand is expected next month as the 18 procurers of power across 10 states from the project have agreed in-principle to accept the termination letter served by Anil Ambani-led Reliance Power.
Reliance Power had served a notice to terminate the contract for the project in April last year due to inordinate delays in land acquisition.

Reliance Power, in August 2009, had won rights to set up a 3,960-MW power plant at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand after bidding a levellised tariff of Rs 1.77 per unit, but couldn't start work on the project as the state government had not provided the required land even after more than five years.

Jharkhand Integrated Power Ltd (JIPL), a special purpose vehicle created for implementing the project, had signed PPA with 18 power off-takers in 10 states for 25 years.
The project was based on captive coal blocks, for which coal was to be sourced from Kerendari BC coal mine block. The total land requirement for the project was over 17,000 acres.
Government had aborted bidding for Cheyyur (Tamil Nadu) and Bedabahal (Odisha) due tepid private sector response in January last year.
The private firms, which had participated in the first round of bidding for both the projects, withdrew their bids citing difficulties in securing finances for these projects.

Earlier last year, Goyal had said, "Unfortunately we did not get enough bids, we have had to scrap the process, its a process which was initiated before this government came in, I thought it was not prudent to keep extending the date without any possible solution."
For the Tamil Nadu UMPP, the private companies in the fray were Adani Power, CLP India, Jindal Steel & power, JSW Energy, Sterlite Energy and Tata Power. Of these, four bought the Request For Proposal document but decided not to go ahead further in the process.
The Odisha UMPP saw nine interested bidders, including Adani Power, CLP India, GMR Energy, Jindal Steel and Power, JSW Energy and Sterlite Energy.

After the private companies pulled out, only NTPC and NHPC were left for bidding.