NEW DELHI: The government on Thursday wrote out a Rs 31,560 crore prescription for boosting generation capacity with projects in two politically important eastern states — UP and Bihar — and extended a lifeline to stressed coal-fired generation units with a total capacity of 40,000 MW (mega watt) by easing fuel supply norms.
According to decisions taken by the Cabinet’s panel on investments, power plants that are ready but do not have coal linkage (supply assurance) from Coal India Ltd because they do not have PPAs (power purchase agreements) will now be given linkage on the basis of short-term PPAs of up to a year. Besides, if power plants cancel exisiting PPAs due to payment default by discoms, the coal linkages will be valid for a year to help them look for alternative PPAs.
To create a market for the stressed power plants, procurement of bulk power by a nodal agency against pre-declared linkages was approved with the provision to allow Central/state gencos to act as aggregators.
