September 07, 2008

RPL and BHEL discussing turnkey contacts for Krishnapatnam UMPP

ET reported that Reliance Power is in talks with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited to place the turnkey contract for its 4,000 MW ultra mega power project at Krishnapatnam and BHEL has time till May 31st 2008 to come up with a competitive offer to bag the deal.

The EPC contract would involve supply of main power equipment package and balance of plants for the project located in Andhra Pradesh. The configuration of the equipment could either be 5 units of 800 MW sets or 6 units of 660 MW sets. With a project cost of about INR 17,000 crore, the engineering, procurement and construction package would work out to about INR 8,000 to INR 10,000 crore.

Mr Jairam Ramesh union minister of state for power said that "Reliance has made an offer to BHEL for giving equipment orders for its Krishnapatnam power project. The order would give a big boost to BHEL’s plans for entering manufacturing of supercritical power equipment. I am hopeful that BHEL would respond positively to the offer."


For BHEL, the Krishnapatnam order would its first bid for a UMPP project. It is looking for orders from large projects, especially for equipment based on supercritical technology. It is also banking on bulk orders from NTPC for its foray into manufacturing 800 MW sets.

For Reliance Power, it would be its first brush with a PSU for an UMPP project. It is negotiating with five foreign equipment majors like Ansaldo from Italy, Doosan of Korea, Japan’s Toshiba, Power Machines from Russia and Shanghai Electric from China for contract of main power equipment for its Sasan UMPP.