NTPC to sign power purchase packs for 25,000mw by Dec

State-owned NTPC Ltd, the largest power producer in the country, on Friday said it will sign power purchase agreements (PPAs) for 25,000 mw of electricity by the end of December.

It is also targeting financial closure for all its proposed plants, to be operational by 2017.

“We have a target of producing 75,000 mw by the end of 2017. Currently, we have tied up around 50,000 mw of capacity. By the end of this calendar year, we would finalise the PPAs for the remaining 25,000 mw also,” Arup Roy Choudhury, chairman and managing director of NTPC, said.

The company has scaled down its 11th Plan capacity addition target from 17,000 mw to around 13,500 mw after some of its plants — North Karanpura (1980 mw), Barh-1 (1980 mw) and Lahori Nagpala (660 mw) faced delays or were scrapped.

“It was not in our hands to control the delay in some of our projects. Otherwise, all of our other plants are on schedule,” said Choudhury.

NTPC is also talking to the government for getting gas on a priority basis for 7,000 mw of its gas-based power plants. The government’s new gas-based policy talks about reserving 2% of new gas allocation for PSUs.

On the hydropower front, the company is re-working
its strategy for the new power plants as it has already faced two big setbacks (Lahori Nagpala and Pithoragarh Hydroelectric projects in Uttarakhand) in the past few months.

“We had invested a lot of money on our Lahori Nagpala project, but just when we had to start construction, the project had to be stalled. We will have to be careful for our new projects,” Choudhury said.

NTPC plans to start production from its Pakhri Barwadhi coal block in Jharkhand in 2011. The Ministry of Coal had recently sent a show-cause notice to the PSU for not starting production on the coal mine allotted to it in 2004.

“We have just got the environment clearance and we hope to produce coal from Pakhri Barwadhi in 2011-12,” Choudhury said.