Tuesday, July 12, 2011


National Conclave on Balance of Plants Calls for Engaging Local Industry in the Sector



Minister of Power Shri Sushilkumar Shinde has said that the large capacity under construction in the power sector must not suffer on account of issues related to Balance of Plants (BoP). He was inaugurating the national conclave on ‘Balance of Plants- Issues and challenges’ for the Power Plants in New Delhi today. Mr. Shinde said the country is likely to achieve the highest capacity addition during the 11th Plan. He added that around 80,000 MW capacity is under construction, which is remarkable. However, he said, a number of projects are still getting delayed due to constraints in timely availability of BoP systems.

The Minister emphasised that in order to expedite the BoP work, the country needs to develop additional players. He added that action has already been taken for a NTPC-BHEL Joint Venture for BoPs in the first phase, however more similar efforts for capacity building of BoPs are required. Mr. Shinde agreed to the suggestion to more actively engage the local industry in development and execution of BoPs and not solely rely on Joint Ventures.

Minister of State for Power Shri K.C. Venugopal in his address emphasised the need for indigenous capacity building of BoPs. He added that this may be achieved by actively engaging the medium scale industry and by training the existing BoP vendors in a Public Private Partnership model.

Secretary, Power Shri P. Uma Shankar said that in order to realise the capacity addition programme during the 12th plan , a lot is needed to be done on the BoP front in terms of widening vendor base, technological innovations, rigorous monitoring , more stringent levy of penalty for delays etc..

The one day conclave was attended by a large number of Balance of Plant vendors associated with ash handling, coal handling, water treatment etc as well as EPC contractors and civil constructing agencies. Detailed discussions were held in respect of all the BoPs and various vendors raised the issues to be addressed and the constraints being faced by them. A number of suggestions also emerged out and it was agreed that all out efforts would be made to remove the constraints in order to boost capacity addition programme of the country.

It may be mentioned that the power sector of the country has improved considerably during the past years and is likely to add more than 50,000MW during the 11th five year plan, which is the highest during any of the earlier plans. The country is in the final year of the 11th Plan and has embarked on the finalisation of the 12th Plan. It has been observed that though the capacity building for the main plants have been undertaken during the past years, the indigenous capacity for BoPs still remained a cause of concern, which needs to be addressed.

The Conclave was organised by Ministry of Power and Central Electricity Authority in association with Central Board of Irrigation and Power.

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