Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), India’s largest power equipment manufacturer, has blamed the flexibility in tender norms specified by the government for the chronic delays in commissioning of power projects, for which it has been repeatedly blamed.
It said the power equipment tenders specify too much flexibility in the size of units to be supplied and the task of tailoring the machines on developers’ demands is the chief reason for the huge time over-runs.
“Tenders demand 250 Mw, plus or minus 20 per cent. That means somebody can offer 210 Mw or 230 Mw and it can go up to 300 Mw. Similarly, 500 Mw plus or minus 20 per cent. Standardisation (of unit size) is not catching up in the country. That is why projects are getting delayed,” said K Ravi Kumar, chairman and managing director of the company. “Engineering takes about 8-9 months,” he added.
BHEL is the only state-owned unit in the domestic power equipment market and accounts for a majority of equipment installed in Indian power plants. The delays in supply of machines by the company have often been cited by the government as a major reason for the failure to meet the power capacity addition targets in the country.
BHEL has, however, been trying to pursue the authorities to ensure standardised unit sizes in tenders. “We are requesting the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to come up with standardised units. Also, when the Planning Commission took a meeting (on the matter), it was told that we should leave the choice to developers, as well as the utilities, as they should have enough leverage to have their own specifications. So, the exercise could not go well. The power ministry is still not agreeable to have standard products. Organisations (developers) do not want standard equipment because they want to have choice,” Kumar said.
Meanwhile, production at Bhel’s Tiruchirapalli (Tiruchi) unit was hit on Monday due to a strike called by workers who are demanding a pay revision. Though there was an earlier threat of all units in South India — the others are at Chennai and Ranipet in Tamil Nadu, besides Hyderabad and Bangalore — going on strike from today, only the Tiruchi unit has been affected.
