Over 124 Pvt Projects Await Cea Clearance

More than 124 private power projects involving an investment of Rs 2,46,472 crore and targeting a capacity generation of 67,281 mw are awaiting clearance from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA).

According to the annual report on power for the year 1996-97, governments decision to open up the power sector for private participation has been encouraging in the context of paucity of resources with the central and state public sector undertaking and state electricity boards (SEBs).

Among the projects involving foreign investments about 54 power projects have been considered out of which 26 projects costing approximately Rs 54,870 crore has been cleared, the report said.

In addition, several projects costing up to Rs 100 crore are coming up through the memorandum of understanding (MoU) and letter of intent (LoI) and projects costing up to Rs 1,000 crore though competitive bidding.

The SEBs have been allowed to negotiate the power purchase agreements (PPAs) through the August 1994 amendment to tariff notification that allows determination of tariffs in deviation of norms laid out in two part tariff notification, provided the tariff is less than the normative tariff.

The SEBs and state governments have been advised to introduce a more competitive element in the process of selecting developers and awarding projects and consider awarding new projects only on the basis of competitive bidding the private power projects would not be cleared by the CEA unless they are awarded through competitive bidding, the report said.

The states have also been advised that renovation and modernisation schemes costing up to Rs 500 crore need not be submitted to CEA for appraisal.

The report said states should impress promoters of independent power projects (IPPs) to go for international competitive bidding in selection of their EPC route contracts in cases where the promoters have not yet finalised such contracts, the report said.

The report has said that the CEA has been further simplified by introducing in-principle clearance followed by techno economic clearance (TEC).