Moser Baer India Ltd (MBIL) plans to develop 6,000 MW of thermal power plants in Gujarat and Orissa in the next three to four years with an investment of nearly Rs 30,000 crore, a senior official said here on Wednesday.
“We have signed an MoU with the Gujarat Government for a 4,000-MW thermal power project and another with the Orissa Government for a 1,980-MW project. We are in the process of selecting the sites in the two States,” Mr Ratul Puri, Executive Director, MBIL, told Business Line here.
Coal linkages
MBIL is constructing thermal power plants of 3,840 MW capacity in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh with an investment of about Rs 20,000 crore. They include a 2,520-MW (660x2, 600x2) plant at Anuppur, near Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh, and 1,320-MW (660x2) unit at Champa, Chhattisgarh. Both these projects are almost on pit-heads, with coal source being around 100 km away.
The company has a primary coal linkage with South-Eastern Coalfields Ltd, a subsidiary of Coal India Ltd, and also has two captive merchant coal mines at Sondhia in Chhattisgarh with 100 million tonnes of reserves. MBIL will require 20 mt domestic coal for these power plants, he said.
About MBIL's hydro-electricity projects, Mr Puri said the two hydel projects in Himachal Pradesh are expected to be commissioned from 2015 to produce 560 MW from the Chenab waters. The company has invested about Rs 7.50 crore per MW on these projects. Besides, it will also start work in 2014 on two hydel projects in Nepal to produce 1,200 MW.
The Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, will inaugurate Moser Baer's 30-MW, Rs 465-crore solar energy farm on October 14 at Gunthawada in Banaskantha district of North Gujarat.
Mr Puri, who is also chairman of Moser Baer Projects Pvt Ltd (MBPPL), said this would be Asia's largest solar energy farm and also the first major project commissioned under the Gujarat Solar Mission, 2009. The multinational company plans to commission 300 MW of solar projects in the next 12 months in India, Germany, Italy and the UK. “We will have 100 MW of solar operational capacity this month and plan to install more than five giga-watt (Gw) by 2020.”
To finance its projects, Moser Baer has raised $600 million from global investors.