BHEL, Reliance Power likely to sign MoU: Jairam Ramesh

Tiruchirapalli, July 13 (UNI) For the first time, the public sector power giant 'BHEL' and a leading private company 'Reliance power' is negotiating for supplying of five units of 800 MW super critical boilers by the BHEL to a proposed Ultra Mega Power Plant (UMPP) at Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh by the Reliance Power.

Informing this to newspersons here, Union Minister of State for Power and Commerce Jairam Ramesh said so far the Reliance Power was importing Chinese equipment for its power plants. Only after his request to Reliance Power CMD Anil Ambani, the private energy player came to BHEL for placing orders, he said, adding, an MOU would be signed between the two companies shortly.

Hoping that a 500 MW Fast Breeder Prototype Reactor (FBPR) would be operational at IGCAR at Kalpakkam by September 2011, he said countries like Russia and France were looking at India for the FBPR technology.

''Once the Nuclear Deal with the US was operationalised, our FBPR technology will be further recognised at the international level,'' he added.

The period between 1991 and 2004 was lean for BHEL, but in the last three years, it had secured orders to the tune of Rs 95,000 crore, he said and added that the present generation capacity of NTPC was 28,000 MW and 20,000 MW would be added in the next five years.

Referring to the wind energy, he said the country's wind energy capacity was estimated at 8000 MW, of which 50 per cent was from Tamil Nadu. ''We have expanded our wind energy plants in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh,'' he said.

To a question, he said ''our order of priority would be coal, nuclear, hydel, gas, wind and solar-based power plants.'' UNI RV DS 1736