Top NTPC sources told The Financial Express on Wednesday that it is also looking at proposal from various financial institutions that the NTPC should take up power trading instead of the Power Trading Corporation (PTC) for various other projects in the country. The FIs have apparently told the union finance ministry that the NTPC should take up trading activities while the guarantee be provided by the Power Finance Corporation (PFC).

NTPC sources said that it was aware that the Maharashtra government as well as the DPC have separately favoured trading of Dabhol power by the NTPC. ``However, at what cost is a major question to be looked into,'' these sources added.

According to NTPC sources, the present Act needs to be amended to allow the NTPC to undertake trading as at present, it is merely a generating company with an installed capacity of over 20,000 mw. NTPC chairman and managing director CP Jain had held a series of meeting internally with top officials to examine the matter.

Meanwhile, the NTPC has conducted an in-house study on the DPC's tariff structure and power purchase bill. According to the same study, capacity charges comprises rupee monthly base load capacity payment, real rupee monthly base load capacity payment, monthly peaking capacity payment and rebates. However, the energy charges consist of delivered energy payment, fees and variable and operation and management payments.

The NTPC study has considered three possibilities viz DPC being not asked to generate power at all; the DPC being asked to generate only during morning and evening peaks at full load; the DPC being asked to generate full load during peak hours and two-third load during off-peak hours.

The NTPC has assumed morning peak hours from 6 am to 10 am and evening peak from 6 pm to 10 pm.

In case of the DPC not being asked to generate power at all, the power bill would reduce from Rs 151.56 crore to just Rs 84.85 crore. Thereby, per unit cost would be adjusted at Rs 2.01.

In the second case, where the DPC is asked to generate only during morning and evening peaks at full load, the NTPC has assumed that there will be 60 start-ups during the month. In this scenario, the total payable charges would be Rs 109.62 crore and number of units avoided would be 221.6 million units. The cost of avoided energy would be Rs 1.89 per unit. However, the per unit cost would be Rs 9.89.

According to the NTPC study, in case of the DPC being asked to generate full load during peak hours and two-third load during off-peak hours, there would not be any start-ups. The power generation would be at 147.73 million units and delivered energy payment for peak hour would be Rs 22.56 crore. For off peak hours, the heat rate would increase by 12 per cent and hence the delivered energy payment for off-peak hours would be Rs 50.53 crore.