State-owned engineering major Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) today indicated that it was not much worried about the draft national electricity plan of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) which has forecast no requirement for new coal plants till 2022.
"They (CEA) have sought comments. New power capacity is required or not is a matter of debate," BHEL chairman and managing director Atul Sobti said here on the sidelines of 31st Indian Engineering Congress by The Institution of Engineers.
With government effort on replacing and modernising old and inefficient thermal power plants with a total estimated capacity of 25,000 MW, Sobti said, of that 11,000 MW is from NTPC.
Given the massive capacity addition plans in the renewable sector, CEA estimates there is no requirement for new coal plants in 2017-22.
BHEL was also targeting at stranded power projects of the country and said recently one project worth Rs 8000 crore got opened up and more are there.
Meanwhile, Sobti said BHEL was the lowest bidder for projects totalling 20,000 MW in the pipeline and, taking all these into account, BHEL was not much concerned with the CEA drat report.
Based on demand projections, CEA estimates new coal-based capacity requirement of 44,085 MW in 2022-27. But with 50,025 MW of coal power projects already in different stages of construction and likely to yield benefits in 2017-22, the agency does not foresee any immediate requirement for new coal power plants.
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