With four southern States agreeing for imported coal as fuel for the Pudimadaka 4,000 MW “ultra mega power project,” NTPC plans to take up on a fast track mode.

NTPC refers to this as its first UMPP, which was initially planned to be taken up using domestic coal. However, with difficulties in securing fuel linkage, and southern States agreeing to buy power even if it is based on imported coal, NTPC is now planning to make it a priority project.

Addressing a press conference here, Arup Roy Choudhury, CMD, said: “This will be one of our imported coal based projects and our first UMPP and form one of the major projects in the South.”

“We are also planning to take up expansion of Ramagundam project in Andhra Pradesh where there is potential to set up two projects of 1,320 MW. This is subject to coal linkages,” he said.

Asked about whether they would consider the BPL project, he said that they were open to executing it. The Pudimadaka project near Visakhapatnam is awaiting land allocation from the Andhra Pradesh Government.

Once that is achieved, necessary clearances would be taken up. This will have five units of 800 MW each. Typically, first unit takes about 42 months to implement.

NTPC has a super thermal power plant of 2,600 MW at Ramagundam in Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, where it is looking at further expansion. It is also likely to consider taking up the BPL power plant which was to come up adjacent its existing power plant.

The BPL project could not make much headway due to various concerns. Referring to some comments made on thermal power plants, the CMD said that the temperature in the Ramagundam plant site was about 4 degree less when compared to temperature in the nearby town.

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