World Energy Outlook 2007

Box 17.3: Coal-Fired Power Plant Technology in India (Continued)
able to expand its manufacturing capacity and when it will be in a position
to produce far more efficient power plants, notably supercritical ones. In any
case, with increasing demand for coal-fired power stations, it is likely that
more plant purchases will have to be made from other manufacturers. Tata
Power has selected Doosan Heavy Industries of Korea as supplier of five
boilers for the 4 GW Mundra project, one of the largest plants ever in India.
Competition between manufacturers is likely to encourage innovation.
Besides work on supercritical power plants, research efforts in India also
focus on fluidised bed-based IGCC. Research is carried out mainly by
BHEL and NTPC, but private participation may prove necessary. Efforts
are under way to develop a 125-MW IGCC unit. Its efficiency is expected
to reach 39.5%, well below that of the IGCC plants that are now on order
in OECD countries.
In 2006, the Ministry of Power launched an initiative to develop large coalbased
plants, known as ultra-mega power projects. Each of these plants will
have a minimum capacity of 4 GW. The intention is to promote the
construction of large supercritical units (800 MW each). The selection of the
projects is based on competitive bidding and both coastal and pit-head projects
can be considered. To streamline these projects, the government set up project
companies to obtain the necessary clearances before offering the project to
bidders and to allocate mining blocks to the pit-head projects.
Gas-fired generation accounted for 9% of total generation in 2005. This share
has risen somewhat over the past decade as gas production increased. The
power sector faces gas supply shortages both because the government favours
allocation of gas supplies to the fertilizer industry (a non-energy use of gas) and
because adequate supplies at the agreed price have not been forthcoming. 12
Many gas-fired power plants still have to run on naphtha as a substitute or
remain idle because naphtha is too expensive to use. CEA estimates that
around 7 TWh of generation was lost in 2005 because of a lack of gas. Out of
the 62 TWh of gas-based electricity produced in 2005, about a quarter came
from industrial autoproducers. 13 Those autoproducers with access to gas in
recent years have elected to build gas-fired plants and gas now accounts for
about 20% of their total production. Future growth in gas-based generation,
both in utilities and autoproducers, crucially depends on the availability of gas
– how fast domestic production will expand and how much imported gas will
17
12. Gas pricing is discussed in the Spotlight in Chapter 15.
13. Industrial autoproducers produce electricity on site mainly for their own use. They are also
referred to as captive power producers.
Chapter 17 - Reference Scenario Supply Projections 513