Finding a lot of interest for the first tender of mid-term (3 years) power purchase agreement (PPA) auction, Power Secretary A K Bhalla has said that his ministry is planning another round for 2,500 Mw capacities to provide respite to stressed power assets. He noted that a PPA is a prerequisite for getting coal supplies for power plants. He pointed out that power sector is facing stress due to coal shortage and other issues and many power projects are starving for coal in the absence of PPAs.
Bhalla has stated that the government's scheme to auction 2,500 MW medium-term PPAs evoked good response and PPAs for 1,900 Mw capacities were signed under the scheme last month. He said that “We did not have difference between fixed cost and variable cost. There was no escalation (of tariff). Those points will be discussed. Whatever (issues) stakeholders have raised, will be discussed.” Besides, he said that Ministry of Power in April 2018 had issued guidelines for a pilot scheme to facilitate aggregation of procurement of power (2500 MW for 03 years) from commissioned coal based power plants through competitive bidding.
Power Secretary has said that the PFC Consulting conducted the bid process for selection of capacity on DEEP e-bidding Portal from different projects. He also said that subsequent to the bidding process, tariff was discovered as Rs 4.24 per unit and projects with aggregate capacity of 1,900 MW were declared successful bidders. On the under utilisation of gas-based power plants, he said “The PLF (capacity utilisation) of gas-based plants is less than 25 percent. So you can estimate that at what capacity they are running because of less availability of domestic gas.”