Coal news and updates

NTPC to award contracts for 4.8GW coal power projects in next three years

The government has asked NTPC Ltd to add capacity in the order of 7,000 plus MW (7 GW). NTPC will be spending about Rs 50,000 crore on these five projects (including Talcher), which comes to an annual CAPEX of about Rs 12,000 crore on coal power projects.

NTPC is now aggressively looking at expanding the capacities of its existing thermal power plants, apart from identifying a few brand new projects.

After awarding the contract for a 1,320 megawatt (MW) thermal power project in Odisha’s Talcher, state-run NTPC Ltd has finalised awarding contracts for four more coal-fired power projects over the next three years. These four projects will add 4.8 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity to the country.

NTPC Ltd, which is India’s biggest electricity generation company (genco), is going to set up new thermal power units at Sipat (1x800 MW) in Chattishargh, Singrauli (2x800 MW) in Uttar Pradesh, Darlipali (1x800 MW) in Odisha, and Lara (2x800 MW), again in Chattisgarh. All these four projects will be expansion projects wherein additional units will be added to the existing thermal power plants.

The expansion plan comes at a time when the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), an advisory body to the power ministry, has stated that India expects its annual power demand to grow at an average of 7.2 percent over five years ending March 2027. This is nearly double the growth rate of over 4 percent seen during the last five years till March 2022.