Reliance Infrastructure Ltd has invited bids for the supply of power on medium-term basis through a single-stage, tariff-based competitive bidding process in order to meet the power demand for its Mumbai distribution licence area. The minimum bid capacity is 50 mw. The company wants to procure power at the generator bus-bar on ?round-the-clock? basis or ?time-of-day? basis for two to six years starting any day between April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2014.
Reliance Infrastructure?s total requirement is 1,475 mw to supply over 27 lakh consumers. Of the 1,475 mw, the company gets 500 mw from its plant at Dahanu, situated near Mumbai, while it procures over 762 mw at higher tariff from Tata Power. The average per unit tariff for Tata Power comes to over Rs 4. Reliance Infrastructure has to pay around Rs 9.50 per unit for the power supplied by Tata Power?s liquid fuel units situated at Trombay in north east Mumbai.
Besides, the company is tied up nearly 250-300 mw through various bilateral contracts. It draws such power at an average tariff of Rs 8.
Reliance Infrastructure sources told FE, ?The bid has been invited with a minimum bid capacity of 50 mw mainly to take care of burgeoning demand in the Mumbai distribution licence area. Reliance Infrastructure estimates annual hike in power demand to 100 mw in its licence area and thus the bid is quite important. The company has proposed capacity addition of 600 mw at its Dahanu plant and it is pursuing 4,000 mw of gas and imported coal-based power project at Shahapur in Maharahstra and 100 mw wind project in Gujarat.? According to sources, its quite essential to tie up power from now to meet the ever increasing demand in Mumbai.
Apart from Reliance Infrastructure, Tata Power has an installed capacity of 2,368 mw of which it supplies nearly 1,850 mw in Mumbai and rest 500 mw for captive use. Analyst say that the availability of power in Mumbai is around 2,350 mw against the demand of over 3,000 mw. The deficit is increasing annually.
The Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission has already directed Tata Power, Reliance Infrastructure and Brihan Mumbai Electric Supply and Transport to make necessary efforts for the procurement of additional power so that Mumbaikars do not face load shedding.