Private sector drives power capacity additions - Adds more than the Central and State utilities combined…

• Fuel shortages and funding woes notwithstanding, private sector developers accounted for much of the power capacity addition that has taken place so far this fiscal. During April-October 2011, the private sector added 4,301 MW, more than what was added by the Central and State sector utilities put together. The continued hold-up at the near-complete Kudankulam nuclear power units, though, could ensure that the actual capacity added could be well short of the 17,716 MW target for the current fiscal, which is the terminal year of the current Plan period.

• Key private sector generation units commissioned during the fiscal include Adani Power's 660 MW Mundra (second unit), Tata Power-DVC's 525 MW Maithon project (Unit 1), two 300 MW units at JSW Energy's Ratnagiri project and Sterlite Energy's 600 MW Orissa unit. The strong private sector perform ance is in line with the progressively improving trend of private developers to capacity addition during the first four years of the current Plan period. And this is despite most of these projects not having firm power purchase agreements, difficulties in getting site clearances, problems in open access, lower preference in allocation of fuel linkages, and impediments such as the need to furnish bank guarantees for getting transmission corridors built.

• In 2010-11, despite slippages, a record power capacity addition of 12,160 MW had been achieved, higher than the previous record for generation capacity commissioned in a single year of 9,585 MW in 2009-10. To put things in perspective, the capacity added during just two years of the Eleventh Plan (21,745 MW added during 2010-11 and 2009-10) was higher than the cumulative capacity addition achieved during the entire five years of each of the last three Plan periods. The country had seen a capacity add ition of 20,950 MW in the Tenth Plan (2002-07), 19,119 MW in the Ninth Plan and 16,423 MW in the Eighth Plan.

• With the capacity addition last fiscal tipping 12,000 MW, and if a similar figure is achieved in the current fiscal, an overall capacity addition of around 48,000 MW is seen as a possibility during the Eleventh Plan, another record by a wide margin. This is, however, going to be well below even the downward revised target of 62,000 MW pegged for the current Plan period, which started with a target of 78,700 MW.

• The overall capacity addition achievement during 2009-10 was about 66 per cent of the target (9,585 MW against a target of 14,507 MW). It was 31 per cent in 2008-09 (3,454 MW against a target of 11,061 MW) and 57 per cent in 2007-08 (9,263 MW against a target of 16,335 MW). According to Government data, of the 9,263-MW commissioned in 2007-08, the private sector accounted for only about eight per cent. This improved to 25 per cent in 2008-09 (883 MW out of the 3,454 MW commissioned that year) and to 45 per cent during 2009-10 (4,310 MW out of 9,585 MW).

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