Mumbai’s plans of generating energy from waste, which had got stymied due to lack of interest for the Deonar project from bidders, are set to see a revival very shortly. The project for generating energy from the more than 3,000 tonne of waste dumped daily at Mumbai’s largest dumping site, Deonar, is being reconfigured to allow players to bid for modules of 750 tonne each, instead of offering a single project for the entire waste.
“This is likely to generate enough interest amongst bidders who were earlier interested but could not muster courage due to the size of the project and apprehensions over dealing with corporations,” additional municipal commissioner (projects), Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Sanjay Mukherjee told FE. Several Indian and overseas players who had initially evinced interest in participating in waste-to-energy projects in Mumbai had backed out when the Deonar project was offered in October, because it entailed processing the entire 3,000 tonne of waste. The project failed to draw a single bidder at the time despite some revisions in bidding norms and extension of dates.
“We are going to invite fresh internationally competitive bids for conversion of 750 tonne/day of waste to energy at Deonar, most likely in the first half of January. The project will be awarded by May 2018,” Mukherjee said. The project will be on a design build own and maintain (DBOM) basis and there will be no public-private partnership, Mukherjee added.
The other three units will be bid out depending on the success of the first unit bid process. For each unit, the investment is likely to be `750-800 crore and about 10-12 MW of power is expected to be generated by each of the 750 tonne/day units. The electricity generated will be used to power many of the establishments of the Mumbai municipal corporation like the storm water pumping stations, which buy power at commercial rates.