13 Consortia In Race For 615mw Gujarat Power Plant

The consortiums include the Torrent group along with Siemens and Power Gen of the UK, Gujarat Gas and Eastern Generation, Essar with Hanjing of S Korea and Larsen & Toubro with Marubeni Corporation of Japan. The companies bidding individually are British Gas, Addition Mission and International Generation Comp-any from the UK, Reliance Power, Desdec Energy from Singapore, Amoco Power and Coastal Power from the US, Tata Electric, and China Light of Hong Kong.

Though 40 consortiums had bought bid documents, only 25 had applied earlier this year. The shortlisted candidates will now submit their commercial bids by January after which a final decision will be taken.

 

The state government has identified 20 sites for small integrated power projects. Reliance, it is learnt, has bid for most of these power plants.

To bring about self sufficiency in the power sector, the Gujarat government is also planning to set up power co-operatives in each of the 50 industrial estates run by the Gujarat State Industrial Development Corporation.

The capacity of these plants will vary between 60mw to 120mw each, depending on the requirements of the members of the respective co-operatives.

The share capital of a member unit in the co-operative will depend on its power requirements. The members will have power entitlement rights in tune with their requirement and share capital. The state government will offer land for the power plants at nominal rates. The power co-operatives will also enjoy tax concessions that are extended to other co-operatives.

The state produces 5,000mw of power and buys another 1,200mw from the central units. Current demand in the state is about 8,700mw. The shortfall is around 2,500mw. However, experts feel this will increase as the state is expecting investments of about Rs 184,000 crore in new industrial units by 2,000 AD. The state's power demand is expected to shoot up to 15,000mw by then. Even if all power plants being planned go on stream by then the state will still end up with a shortfall of 5,000mw.