POWER May 2012 - 8

India Revs Up Capacity with Massive
Coal Plants
India, a country that plans to fuel its current level of gross domestic
product growth of between 8% and 9% with massive, mostly
coal-fired power capacity additions over the next decade, in March
commissioned an 800-MW supercritical unit at the first of India's
government-envisioned ultra-mega power plants (UMPP). Tata Power,
the country's largest integrated private utility, put online Unit
1 of the five-unit 4,000-MW Mundra UMPP in Gujarat State, just 48
months after construction began on the project (Figure 1).
The unit had been ready for grid synchronization since last
June, the company said in a statement, but it was awaiting a
transmission system connection from India's national grid operator,
the Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd., a project that was commissioned
on Sept. 29. Work on Units 2, 3, 4, and 5 was all on
track and " progressing well, " Tata said. The project located south
of Tunda Wand village in Mundra Taluka, Kutch district of Gujarat,
will be operated by Tata subsidiary Coastal Gujarat Project Ltd.
and is expected to supply five power shortage-stricken Indian
states: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab.
In 2006, India announced it would fast-track a series of 16
ambitious supercritical coal-fired projects, each with a capacity
of 4,000 MW, to help boost power capacity by at least 100,000
MW by the end of the five-year 11th plan (which ends this year).
Each UMPP is expected to require an investment of about $4.5
billion or more, it said.
Only four projects have been awarded so far on a build, own,
and operate basis. In addition to Tata's Mundra in Gujarat, three
are being developed by Reliance Power: the Sasan UMPP in Madhya
Pradesh, Krishnapatnam UMPP in Andhra Pradesh, and Tilaiya
UMPP in Jharkhand. The first 660-MW unit at Sasan is expected to
come online in January 2013, just as the last Mundra units will be
commissioned. At Krishnapatnam, however, where Reliance had
planned to build six 660-MW units, work has been paused since
last June. Reliance cited a new regulation from Indonesia-from
which it imports its coal-that prohibited sale of coal, including
to affiliate companies, below benchmark prices.
The Tilaiya project, which would also comprise six 660-MW
units and is expected to come online between May 2015 and
June 2017, is being built at a coal pithead (mine mouth) and has
dedicated captive coal blocks-unlike the other three projects,
which will rely on imported coal.
1. The start of something big. India's Tata Power put online
Unit 1 of the five-unit 4,000-MW Mundra ultra-mega power plant
(UMPP) in Gujarat State. The project is the first of a series of 16 UMPPs
envisioned by the Indian government to ramp up power capacity and
address chronic power shortages. Some projects will have dedicated
captive coal blocks while others will be built closer to ports and will rely
on imported coal. Courtesy: Tata Power
Future UMPP projects may be sited in this way, or closer to
ports, as India battles chronic coal shortages. Though the country
has large coal reserves, domestic mining companies are struggling
to keep up with demand needed to sustain its existing coal
plants, which account for 55% of India's generation.
India's capacity frenzy extends far beyond UMPPs, and even
bigger coal plants are slated to come online over the next decade.
This March, international business conglomerate Adani Group's
power arm, Adani Power, synchronized the fifth supercritical unit
of its 4,620-MW coal-fired power plant, also in Mundra, Gujarat,
making it one of the biggest privately owned coal plants
in the world (Figure 2). The plant was developed in four phases
and comprises four units of 330 MW each and five supercritical
units of 660 MW each. Construction began in 2008 and full commissioning
is expected later in 2012. Like Tata's Mundra UMPP,
Adani's plant will also use imported Indonesian coal.
The Mundra plants are two of India's first supercritical units
in an existing 105-GW coal fleet, though dozens more advanced
coal plants aiming for reduced fuel consumption are in the pipeline.
In late February, national generator NTPC, for example,
announced it would build India's first coal-fired 800-MW ultrasupercritical
thermal power plant project by 2017. Meanwhile,
India's 12th plan calls for 60% of coal capacity additions to come
from supercritical plants.
And India is not alone: According to the International Energy
Agency's (IEA's) recently released World Energy Outlook, the past
five years have seen increased shares of both supercritical and
advanced coal generation technologies, such as ultrasupercritical
and integrated gasification combined cycle technology. In 2010,
roughly three-quarters of coal-fired capacity worldwide was subcritical,
compared with close to 85% in 1990. About 20% was
supercritical, and only 3% consisted of advanced technologies.
The agency projects that advanced technologies will make up a
much larger share of future coal plants, which are expected to
account for around 27% of the total new additions to generating
capacity worldwide between 2011 and 2020, and around 22%
between 2011 and 2035.
One key factor that impedes the deployment of more efficient
coal-fired generation is the " often relatively expensive " levelized
2. Clash of the titans. In March, Adani Power put online the fifth
supercritical unit of its 4,620-MW coal-fired power plant that is sited in
Mundra, Gujarat State, adjacent to Tata Power's recently commissioned
800-MW supercritical unit of its ultra-mega power plant. This image
shows fishermen walking in front of the Tata Mundra plant (left) and
Adani Power project (right). Courtesy: Bank Information Center Trust
8
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POWER May 2012

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