Govt may buy private power plants if price is right

Nagpur: Saddled with large number of aging units of Mahagenco, the state government is exploring the option of buying private power plants if the owners are ready to sell at reasonable rates. VishwasPathak, director of MSEB Holding Company, said that two options would be explored. “We will have to increase our generation capacity as Mahagenco’s units are aging fast and the demand for power is constantly increasing.We can buy private power plants or buy power from them, whichever works out cheaper.
“There are a large number of private plants whose total capacity is around 2,000 MW. If we start new units, the cost per MW will be around Rs 7 crore. If the private plant owners are ready to sell their plants at Rs 4 to Rs 5 crore per MW, we would buy the plant,” Pathak said addressing a ‘Meet the Press’ organized by Nagpur Union of Working Journalists (NUWJ) on Wednesday.
Energy minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule had launched the feeder manager project but it failed to get much response. Commenting on it, Pathak said that government had decided to change some norms. “Earlier, we had decided to give one feeder to one person but now we are going for a cluster approach. One person can manage upto ten feeders,” he said.
Admitting delay in commissioning of new units in Koradi and Chandrapur, Pathak said the energy department was finding out reasons for it and if it was found out it was due to negligence of some officers then action would be taken against them. The present government was also trying to reduce the rate of interest on power company loans from the present 12.5% to 8%, he added.
When pointed out that the power tariff had increased through the June tariff order of Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC), the MSEB director said that the new tariff should not be compared with subsidized one. “The Congress-NCP government had subsidized the tariff for one year by 20%. If you compare with the actual tariff, it has gone down,” he added. Pathak, however, admitted the tariff had now increased due to levy of very high fuel surcharge.