New power plants to create business for global firms

BHEL supply delays irk Maharashtra government.

The state-owned power generation utility Mahagenco¿s decision to shift to 800 Mw supercritical plants instead of smaller 250 Mw or 500 Mw plants will throw open business opportunities of over Rs 11,500 crore to international power generation equipment suppliers like ABB, Siemens, Areva, Alsthom and others.

These global players can¿t match the prices offered by the public sector giant Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd (BHEL) in the smaller capacity thermal power generation plants.

However, the Maharashtra government is not happy with Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd¿s (BHEL) performance in meeting the supply deadlines. Mahagenco¿s projects of 2,000 Mw have been delayed by six to nine months.

A situation which the state government can ill-afford as the state is facing a huge power shortage of over 5,000 Mw. Various parts of state face for period between four and half hours to 14 hours.

This has forced Mahagenco to consider invoking the penalty clause in the supply agreement, said sources in the state government¿s energy ministry.

For the same reason we are considering to go in for supercritical plants where bids from international power generation equipment players can compete with BHEL, which will help us speed up our capacity addition programme, said sources from state energy ministry.

As international players can¿t match BHEL¿s prices in smaller plants, because of which BHEL¿s order book is full for two, to two and half years, and this is resulting in delays in the delivery by BHEL. On the other hand, presently only National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Tata Power Company (TPC) are envisaging the plans to go in for supercritical technology, sources said.

The Mahagenco plans a capacity addition of around 4,300 Mw. The present benchmark for thermal power plant varies between Rs 4.5 crore and Rs 4.7 crore per Mw.

The (boiler-turbine and generator- BTG) component of the cost is around 60 per cent of the total cost of commissioning the thermal power plant.

That means international players have opportunity to bag the business of over Rs 11,500 crore from Mahagenco, sources elaborated.