The Hindu Business Line : NTPC in talks with three States for hydel projects

NATIONAL Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (NTPC) is diversifying into coal mining and consolidating its hydel power generation. It is holding parleys with several State Governments for new hydel projects.

The Executive Director of NTPC's Southern region, Mr L.V. Rao, said: "We at NTPC have taken a decision to address hydel power generation given the pressure on fossil fuels. As a result, we expect to take up projects with total capacity of about 5,000 MW during the Tenth Plan period."

Negotiations are on with Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka Governments.

"We have so far created a hydel generation capacity of 1500 MW and are eyeing 5000 MW by 2007," he told newspersons on Monday.

Mr Rao said NTPC southern region coal stations achieved 91.2 per cent operating availability, generating 25,472 million units and thereby achieved 100 per cent realisation. NTPC is on track to achieving additional capacity generation of about 9,160 MW and has thus far commissioned 3,500 MW and about another 4,210 MW of capacity is under various stages of implementation.

"We have decided to foray into coal generation and are recruiting a lot of mining engineers in the company. NTPC has been allotted a block by the Central Government at Pakri/Barwadih in North Karanpura, and we expect to commission mining operations by 2007. We have adopted a cautious approach to this foray and believe that this would be strategic to our company operations. We are looking at other parts of the country to tap the coal mining potential there and prefer open cast mines," he explained.

"Given the changed scenario, new projects that NTPC proposes to develop are being filed along with coal mining costs since integrated projects would help us mine our own requirement and be self sufficient," Mr Rao said.

Coal supply critical

The NTPC official said that fuel supply remained critical for their plants in the South with both Ramagundam and Simhadri coal units under constant pressure for quality supply of coal.

"We are also considering various options for the Rajiv Gandhi (Kayamkulam) 650x3 unit power plant, since gas linkage is a major concern. The issue is we don't see any new options opening up in the near future," he said.

"Since there is pressure on supply of coal for Simhadri plant, which has recorded a 100.66 plant load factor in the last six months, we were forced to import quality coal from Indonesia. Following this, we are blending domestic coal with imported coal, the latter of superior grade, and using in our plants, and thereby keeping a check on input costs," he said.

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