The Hindu Business Line : PM seeks expert opinion on NTPC's equipment foray

Chennai April 13 The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has asked the Chairman of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) and the former Chairman and Managing Director of Maruti Udyog Ltd and SAIL, Dr V. Krishnamurthy, to look into the issue of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) getting into the manufacture of equipment for power generation, Dr Krishnamurthy confirmed to Business Line on Thursday.

The move of NTPC is seen as a sort of a stand-off between the Ministry of Power and the Ministry of Heavy Industries, whose main PSU, BHEL, produces power project equipment. The Ministry of Power feels that generation capacity addition in the Tenth Plan fell short of target mainly because BHEL was not able to supply the equipment on time.

Dr Krishnamurthy was the first Executive Director of BHEL's Tiruchi complex and was largely responsible for the plant's construction in the early 1960s. He was involved with the project right from the stage of selection of the site.

BHEL said that in its opinion, NTPC may come up against regulatory issues if it produced its own equipment because the high cost of the equipment (due to low economy of scale) would make the electricity tariff high. "I have taken note of BHEL's views," Dr Krishnamurthy said.

Boiler tech transfer

He said that the issue of transfer of technology of supercritical boilers had also been referred to him. Supercritical boilers are more efficient — they produce more electricity per unit of fuel. In 2005, BHEL tied-up with Alstom for this technology, but is yet to secure an order (NTPC placed the order for its 2x660 MW Sipat project on a Korean company called Doosan).

Dr Krishnamurthy noted that BHEL was an expert in 500-MW boiler technology (the Government decided in the early 1980s to place a bulk order, of eight sets, on BHEL). The technology for the steam turbine came from Siemens and for the boilers, from Combustion Engineering (now Alstom).

Dr Krishnamurthy is examining whether a similar approach — of placing a bulk order for supercritical boilers on BHEL — would help the company fully absorb the technology from Alstom.

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