Union power minister to dedicate two NTPC units in Bihar today

Union power, new and renewable energy minister RK Singh will review implementation of central schemes in power sector in Bihar, including the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthan Mahabhiyan (PM Kusum) scheme, which hasn’t seen much progress in the state, officials said

Union power, new and renewable energy minister RK Singh will review implementation of central schemes in power sector in Bihar, including the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthan Mahabhiyan (PM Kusum) scheme, which hasn’t seen much progress in the state, officials said.

Union power, new and renewable energy minister RK Singh. (HT File)

In Singh’s presence, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar will dedicate the 500 MW stage-II units of Barauni Thermal Power Station and 660 MW unit 1 of the Barh Super Thermal Power project from Barh in Patna district on Saturday.

Both Barh and Barauni units are run by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC).

The first component of the PM Kusum scheme involves setting up decentralised ground mounted grid connected renewable power plants of individual plant size up to 2 MW, said an office memorandum of the ministry of New and Renewable Energy, dated July 22, 2019.

As part of initiating work on this scheme, the state energy department has decided to invite farmers and private land owners set up grid connected solar plants of 500 kW to 2 MW capacity, said officials of the energy department privy to the scheme.

“All an individual has to do is bear the cost of setting up the solar plant. The state discoms will purchase the entire power thus generated at a rate to be decided by the regulator — the Bihar Electricity Regulatory Commission (BERC). They will also bear the cost of laying transmission line for carrying power from the solar power grid of private land owners to its distribution system,” said the official who did not wish to be named.

Central scheme yet to take off

Much of the ground work and inter-department coordination between the discoms — the north and the south Bihar power distribution companies — and the Bihar Renewable Energy Development Agency (BREDA) was lacking, said government sources, even as the discoms want to showcase initiation of work under the PM’s scheme to the Central team on Saturday.

“We are yet to identify the potential areas in the state where the scheme can be rolled out and farmers or land owners be invited to set up grid connected solar plants of 500 kW to 2 MW capacity,” said an official who did not wish to be identified.

The central scheme is envisaged against the backdrop that India has committed to increasing the share of installed capacity of electric power from non-fossil-fuel sources to 40% by 2030. The Union cabinet had approved scaling up of solar power target from 20,000 MW of grid connected solar power projects to 1,00,000 MW by 2022.

While large scale solar power generation projects are being installed to achieve the ambitious target of 100 GW of solar power generation by 2022, it has been planned to simultaneously develop decentralised solar energy and other renewable energy generation plants of capacity up to 2 MW which could be connected directly to existing 33/11 kV or 66/11 kV or 110/11 kV sub-stations of distribution company, thus saving in transmission system requirement apart from transmission and distribution losses.

Ironically, not much has been done on this front in Bihar so far.

Managing director (MD) of South Bihar Power Distribution Company Limited, Sanjiwan Sinha did not respond to calls or text messages.