Singh sees power exports for South Asia

Minister of State for Power and New and Renewable Energy, R.K. Singh has called on National Thermal Power Corp Ltd (NTPC) to become India’s power sector multinational by setting up power plants in other countries and become world’s largest power producer.

Singh pointed out the huge opportunity to export cheap power to India’s neighbouring countries for the benefit of the reigon.

Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh are viable markets for exporting cheap electricity from India as per unit cost of electricity is very high in these neighbouring countries.

Speaking at the ‘Indian Power Stations 2018’ – International Conference on Operations and Maintenance’ on 13 Feb 2018, he disclosed that his ministry would explore the idea of sending teams to these countries to assess the demand for export of power.

Talking about achieving Government’s aim of ‘24×7 Power for All’ Singh said, “If you look at the entire power sector, the demand has been suppressed because not everyone is connected.

“We have just started taking-off and going to enter double digit growth. What we see as excess capacity today may not turn out to be enough if we unlock that demand. The unlocking of demand will come but with some constraints.

“We don’t have a shortage of coal but we need to put in place mechanisms to get coal from underground to over ground and to the power stations and we need to do that as soon as possible,” he said.

When all power plants in the country would run at 70-80 per cent of PLF, there would be no stressed assets. The problem of stressed assets is there because first, the power plants are not able to get adequate coal and secondly, demand needs to be unlocked, said the minister.

Sharing his views on the status of renewable energy in the country, Singh said that the progressive realization of low prices of renewable energy is sending wrong signals to the market.

“The consumers and institutional companies need to understand that this cheap renewable power by itself is not sufficient and need rebalancing with support of steady power. This message we need to get across to the people and to DISCOMs (distribution companies),” he stressed. fii-news.com