With the country struggling to meet targets for capacity addition, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has chalked out a major “National enhanced efficiency renovation and modernisation programme” for around 4,900 MW of power projects in the public sector during the XI and XII Plans.
Officials in the Power Ministry said this new initiative would seek to renovate and modernise projects that have worn out and need restoration in tune with the technological changes being made in the power sector, including increased use of information technology tool.
Under this major national initiative, the CEA has recommended that the Power Ministry should undertake renovation and modernisation of about 19,000 MW capacity, life extension of about 7,300 MW during the XI Plan. Apart from this, it has also outlined that renovation and modernisation of about 5,000 MW and life extension of about 16,500 MW should be done during the XII Plan.
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Officials said this programme would enable the country to get additional generation at low cost in short gestation period. Besides generation improvement, it results in improvement of efficiency, environmental emissions and improvement in availability, safety and reliability.
On the other hand, officials said that despite the XI Plan capacity addition target being reduced to around 62,000 MW from the original 78,000 MW, things have not been looking bright for the Power Ministry. In order to keep a close vigil on these ongoing projects, rigorous monitoring of capacity addition of the generation projects is being done at the highest level by the Ministry and CEA. To augment the equipment manufacturing capacity to support the envisaged capacity addition programme, five new joint ventures are taking shape.
Some of the major joint ventures include L&T-MHI, Bharat Forge-Alstom, Ansaldo-GB Power, Toshiba and JSW, and Thermax with Babcock and Wilcox. Besides this, Dussan from Korea is putting up an equipment manufacturing facility in India on 100 per cent FDI (foreign direct investment). This will expedite the capacity addition programme. In addition to this, the capacity of BHEL is being increased to 20,000 MW by the end of 2012.
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The Power Ministry is also gearing up to launch the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE) which is part of the National Action Plan of Climate Change. The objective of the mission is to devise efficient and cost-effective strategies through demand-side management, initiatives and market transformation.