Power Finance Corp likely to invite bids for Orissa, Tamil Nadu UMPPs by month end

Power Finance Corporation (PFC) will commence tendering for the allocation of Orissa and Tamil Nadu ultra-mega power projects by the end of this month on the basis of the revised standard bidding documents (SBDs), according to sources.

PFC, the nodal agency for the UMPP scheme, has already secured the go-ahead from 13 nominated power procurers, including those from home states Orissa and Tamil Nadu.

A ministerial panel, led by defence minister AK Antony, recently approved the revised SBDs as per which the ownership of land will lie with buyer discoms and the contract period for power developers is 40 years. Based on that, PFC is finalising tender documents for the two UMPPs ? Bedabahal in Orissa and Cheyyur in Tamil Nadu.

?PFC is is expected to issue Request for Qualification (RFQs) by the end of this month,? a power ministry official said. The fresh round of bidding for UMPPs is being done after a gap of five years. The bidding had been halted due to bottlenecks like green hurdles and delay in finalisation of SBDs.

Private power procurers are not very happy with the revised SBDs, and it remains to be seen how they respond to the RFQs for these UMPPs. As many as 20 power companies, including NTPC, Tata Power and Adani Power, had earlier expressed interest to participate in Bedabahal UMPP?s bidding, which was called by PFC on the basis of old SBDs but revoked later.

To expedite capacity addition in the power sector, the Centre has envisaged a total of 16 UMPPs, each with 4,000-MW capacity, for implementation. Of these, four UMPPs at places like Sasan, Tilaiya, Mundra and Krishnapatnam have already been auctioned out by the PFC. The nodal agency has decided to initiate bidding for these projects after all the issues have been resolved. While the Bedabahal project is based on captive coal, the proposed Cheyyur plant will be fired with imported coal.

The other beneficiaries of electricity from these projects are Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.