Gupta Energy to Commission Chandrapur Project by End of Fiscal Year 2010-11

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Gupta Coal India Limited (Nagpur, India), a coal-beneficiation and washery major, has made significant progress with its maiden power venture in Maharashtra. The 120-megawatt (MW) project, which is being executed by Gupta Energy Private Limited, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) floated by Gupta Coal, is likely to be brought on-stream by the end of the 2010-11 fiscal year.

Being developed at Usegaon in the Chandrapur district of the state, the washery reject-based power plant, upon commissioning, would be India's first commercial-scale power unit of its kind. The total cost of the project it been estimated at $14.3 million.

The project has been financed through a debt-equity ratio of 70:30. A consortium of financial institutions led by Axis Bank has provided the debt component of the investment.

The power plant will have two circulating fluidized bed-combustion (CFBC) boilers of 250-tonne-per-hour capacity, which were sourced from Ningguo Thaichen Elec-industrial Company, a Chinese vendor. The boilers would be fed with an 80:20 blend of washery reject and an F-grade indigenous raw coal.

About 3,000 tonnes coal reject would be required per day to run the plant at full capacity. Coal rejects will be sourced from the washeries of Gupta Coal, which are in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, while the raw coal need for the plant would be met by the collieries of Western Coalfields Limited.

The water requirement for the power plant has been estimated at 11,400 cubic meters per day, which will be sourced from the adjacent Warda River.

The company already has entered into a power purchase agreement with Tata Power Trading Company. The tariff for the supply of power would range between 2.60 to 3.55 rupees per unit, depending on the demand.

As a part of forward integration of its coal business, Gupta Group has ventured into power generation. It is in the process of establishing independent power plants utilizing both conventional and non-conventional energy sources. The group's ongoing power projects include a 1,000-MW thermal power plant in Chhattisgarh. The group also has proposed setting up coal-fired power plants in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

Gupta Group, through associate company Maharashtra Vidyut Nigam Limited, is currently setting up a 10-MW, biomass-based power project in the Wardha district of Maharashtra. The group already has installed five wind mills in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, with an aggregate installed capacity of 11.85 MW.

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