Cement, Energy and Environment

but it won't be announcing any projects for now. "We will add only one more 660 mw unit at Tiroda to close this fiscal year with installed capacity of 9,280 mw," Chief Executive Vineet Jain told ET. "Instead of adding more capacity in view of the ongoing concerns in the sector, we will now focus on consolidating our position." According to him, despite incurring Rs 3,000 crore of losses during the first three quarter of the just-ended fiscal year, it has been supplying power regularly to distribution utilities. Many of India's state power distributors are in bad health, and are unable to make regular payments for the power they buy. While this hurts power producers, they are also badly hit by fuel shortages - mainly of coal and gas that fire most of the country's generation units - leading several of them to delay projects announced earlier and stay away from new announcements. Out of country's 1.63 lakh mw of installed thermal power generation capacity, private sector accounts for 50,000 mw while util ities run by state and central governments control the balance. Jain said the company will go back to planning only after the next government provides more clarity over issues concerning the developers. Jindal Steel & Power, which is currently in the process of completing power projects announced earlier, has decided not to add any capacity until fuel supply and environmental clearances are secured. "Most of the capacity being added at the moment is from the projects which were started three-four years ago at which time the industry looked very promising ," a company spokesperson said. "It's important to know that no new significant power projects are coming up in the private sector. And that would remain the trend unti l there is more certainty about the future of power sector as also availability of fuel and transmission capacity is assured," this person said. In the past few weeks, Jindal Steel & Power commissioned two 600 mw units at Tanmar. It is scheduled to add one more 600 mw unit by October to have total capacity of 3,400 mw. " In the power sector, many of the projects had reached a stage from where it was not possible for the developers to abandon the plans. So the only option for the developers was to commission their power projects," said Association of Power Producers Director-General Ashok Khurana. Courtesy: The Economic Times,04.04.2014. Pg. No.21 ~~.;: ·' "'.. ~~'!-' ,,~"1,: #>.'"~""'"~'"r' AH.fi; Or''~. ' . "'•'· r.a.• 1 t'~'!!;i•1• ; . .... ' ~ :.-. .. s .., · ·· ~' · ·· · · o ar · • 1 • ' . . . . ' SOLAR POWER AS CHEAP AS THERMAL Earlier this month, when Madhya Pradesh accepted the bid of Himgiri Energy Ventures to supply solar power to the state grid at ~ 6.5 a unit, it was a figure to note even by the industry's standards of smashing records by the season. This contract award shaved off 13 per cent from the lowest price at which Indian industry was willing to supply solar power; over three years, the drop is a steep 61 per cent. More importantly, the MP tender brought the price of solar power closer to the price of thermal power - produced from coal or gas, and India's largest source. For 2012-13, Delhi's power utilities were projecting to buy conventional power at an average unit price of Rs 5. 71. In other words, at Rs 6.5, solar is just 14 per cent above thermal. Its price prognosis is also better. Even as coal and natural gas become costlier, solar plants bask in free and ample sunshine and falling equipment prices. All this is taking the energy sector towards a game-changing milestone: grid parity, or the situation where solar costs the same as conventional sources. "Price bids in conventional power have been up to Rs 5 per unit," says Sanjay Chakrabarti, partner (clean energy), Ernst & Young. "Keeping that as the grid parity price, wind power has already achieved grid parity and solar is quite close." The ministry of new and renewable energy is projecting grid parity by 2017 -- five years ahead of its initial projection of 2022. Cheaper sola r power Some countries are there. Like Germany, which has 36,000 MW of solar capacity, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. An early adopter, Germany started seeing a spike in solar capacity from 2001. In India, the spike came only in 2012, since when its solar capacity has increased from 2.5 MW to 1,759 MW (See graphic). The Central government is looking to increase capacity through the National Solar Mission, which gives a certain set of incentives to companies and aims to put up 22,000 MW of solar capacity by 2022. In its last round of bidding, held this January, the government received bids for 2,170 MW, three times the advertised requirement , from 53 companies. Among them were state power utilities , global renewable-energy players and fresh entrants with international funding, holding out an investment of~ 5,000 crore. tl