Power trader PTC India Limited is expecting a multifold increase in its trade volumes in the next 7-8 years from the current level of 2,000 Mw.
“We now have power purchase agreements with various projects for 15,000 Mw. Of these, projects having an installed capacity of 7,000-8,000 Mw are now set for achieving financial closure. The remaining projects are also expected to reach the stage of financial closure in a couple of years,” PTC India director (finance), Deepak Amitabh, told Business Standard.
He said PTC's trade volumes were increasing continuously and it had sold 18 billion units of power last year. “Additional volumes will keep adding with power projects being commissioned one after the other,” Amitabh said.
PTC India, owned by state-run utilities like NTPC, NHPC, Power Grid and Power Finance Corporation, posted a turnover and net profit of Rs 792.54 crore and Rs 107.26 crore respectively in 2009-10.
According to Amitabh, along with the growth in trade volumes, the merchant power component of PTC would also increase to 15-20 per cent from the present level of around 5 per cent. “The pie is becoming larger,” he said.
He, however, said the scope for merchant power depended upon the power plants capacity to ramp up generation whenever needed. He expects that peaking power shortages in the country would always continue.
Amitabh said PTC had achieved its objective of providing credit risk mitigation to private power project developers. “We have collected every pie of over Rs 30,000 crore lent to the developers without any delay. This gave confidence to the lenders that power projects are bankable,” he added.
