Bids for Rajpura plant to be opened next week

The fate of the 1,320 megawatt (Mw) thermal power plant at Rajpura (Punjab) will be decided by next week. According to sources, the financial bids (related to power tariff) for the proposed project would be opened next week and sent to the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) for approval.

“ Already, the technical bids have been opened and evaluated. We are going to open the financial bids related to the tariff structure next week and expect the successful bidder to be announced at that time,” said a PSEB official. The final selection of the successful bidder will be made after evaluation of the documents submitted by the companies.

It is worth mentioning here that in response to the board’s advertisement, seven companies including Adani Power, Larsen and Toubro, Lanco Infra, GMR, Welspun, JSW Power and Alliance Hydro of Emtec group submitted their bids for the proposed thermal plant. The bid of the Alliance Hydro of Emtec group has been disqualified on the technical stage, according to the sources. PSEB officials said the bidding process had been changed this time as the requests for qualification and requests for proposal were sought together.

The coal-based Rajpura thermal power plant with two units of 660 Mw each will be awarded to a developer on build, own and operate basis through tariff-based international competitive bidding. Further, Letter of Intent (LOI) of this plant is expected to be issued by this month (November 2009) and first unit of 660 Mw is expected by September 2013 and second unit in January 2014.

It is further informed that for the 1,320 Mw Rajpura Thermal Plant, 1,078 acres have already been acquired. All clearances have also been obtained for the project.

This is the second time the board has invited tender for the proposed project. Earlier, due to the global recession, only one company M/s Lanco Infratech participated in the bidding process but the tariff quoted by it was too high. So the LOI could not be issued to the firm. In its last request for proposal for the Rajpura plant, Lanco’s bid was Rs 3.38 per unit. Before its rejection by the regulator (Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission), the PSEB had asked the Punjab Government to negotiate the price with Lanco, which later brought it down to Rs 3.30 per unit.

In compliance of the order of PSERC, re-bidding has been done and RFQ (request for qualification) and RFP (request for proposal) documents were floated on June 10, 2009.