New power minister to look at ramping up capacity addition

Ramping up the addition of power generation capacity in the country will be one of the key issues the new power minister would address, according to the power ministry, which has drawn up a list of priority areas.

“Speeding up capacity addition to ensure increased power generation is one of the key issues that would be looked at by the new minister. The target is to add around 12,000-15,000 Mw generation capacity every year,” said a senior official from the ministry.

The official also added that this would include pushing up the state-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), the country’s largest power equipment manufacturer, to perform and deliver. “Projects are getting delayed due to lack of Balance of Plant (BoP) equipment,” he said.

In the last Plan period (2002-2007), a generation capacity addition target of 41,000 Mw was set, but only 21,000 Mw could be achieved. In the current Plan period ended March 2012, a generation capacity addition target of over 78,000 Mw has been set by the government.

However, achievement of the targeted capacity addition came down from 58 per cent in the first year of the current Plan (2007-2008) to 44 per cent in the last fiscal, due to delays in the supply of critical components and fuel shortage. Overall power deficit in the country has, however, declined from 16.6 per cent to 12 per cent in the same period.