25-yr old power plants to be turned into super critical plants

All power plants, which are over 25 years old, will be phased out and converted into 'super critical plants' to augment generation capacity and reduce pollution, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said today.

Goyal told Lok Sabha that these old power plants of NTPC, which together produced around 11,000 MW power, will be phased out gradually and converted into 'super critical plant'.

"Such plants are six to eight time less pollutant and will be able to generate more power," he said during Question Hour. Goyal said during 12th Plan till September 2016, a total of 3,000 MW of inefficient thermal generating capacity has been retired, which will result in better utilisation of more efficient plants.

The Minister said to revive and improve utilisation of the stranded gas based power generation capacity in the country, the Centre has sanctioned a scheme supported with Power System Development Fund for utilisation of gas based power generation capacity for 2015-16 and 2016-17.

"The scheme envisages supply of imported re-gasified liquefied natural gas to the stranded gas based plants as well as plants receiving domestic gas, selected through a reverse e-bidding process," he said.

Goyal said with '24X7 power for all' initiative taken jointly with the state governments, the access to electricity would increase and accordingly the electricity demand would increase, leading to increased utilisation of power generation capacity.

"Plans for 35 out of 36 states/UTs have already been prepared and are under implementation," he said.

The Minister said UDAY (Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana), a scheme for the financial turnaround and operational improvement of power distribution companies has been approved by the government which may enable them to procure more power from generators, thus increasing their Plant Load Factor.