Edl India To Set Up Green Power Plant

West Bengal is set to produce `green power' once a 23 mw power plant is set up at the Dhapa garbage dumping ground in east Calcutta.

EDL India private Ltd, a company jointly owned by EDL, Australia and an NRI promoted investment firm Arcee Holdings Ltd, submitted its project report early this week for converting the city's solid waste into electric power, to the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and the Calcutta Metropolitan Corporation

The plant's cost is estimated at Rs 230 crore, Rs 10 crore per mw of installed capacity. However, promoters expect a subsidy of Rs 3 crore per mw. The balance will be funded by debt and equity.

The plant will use technology from Australia. It will consume 1,000 tonnes of Calcutta's garbage, working round-the-clock. Power will be purchased by West Bengal State Electricity Board.

EDL will take up the project on Build-Own-Operate basis, through a newly formed company which will also include some other local entities.

The Australian firm has quoted for a similar project against a tender floated by the Tamil Nadu government.

The project report was prepared after talks with West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation chairman Somnath Chatterjee, Calcutta Metropolitan Corporation commissioner Asim Barman and the state power minister S K Sen in May 1997.

Earlier the industrial development corporation roped in Biomass System International, California for a similar garbage-to-electricity project and an MoU was signed in December, 1996.

However, the project is yet to take off though the US company had made an ambitious offer to produce daily 175 mw of power from 1500 tonne of garbage.

The state industrial development corporation officials hoped that on they are not disappointed on this occasion.

This project is being posed as the state's only demonstration project that will produce power from garbage and will be entitled to various concession from the Non-Conventional Energy Sources ministry under government's policy to offer concession to one such demonstration project in every state.

Calcutta generates nearly 2,500 tonnes of garbage every day. Of this, 500 tonnes garbage has been committed to Excel Industries Ltd for producing fertiliser. The new plant will utilise another 1,000 tonne.