Reliance Power places $10 bn order

“This is a historic day for Reliance Power,for its shareholders,for its million customers,” Reliance Power Chairman Anil Ambani said after signing the MoU with Shanghai Electric here.

“The order includes 42 units of 660 MW each based on supercritical technology,” the company said in a statement,while RPower executives separately noted that this was the single largest equipment purchase order.

Shanghai Electric is already supplying equipment to Reliance Power’s 4,000 MW Sasan Power project in Madhya Pradesh,and today’s agreement would be for the power projects at Krishnapatnam (Andhra Pradesh),Tilaiya (Jharkhand),Chitrangi (Madhya Pradesh) and other expansion projects.

The financing for the equipment has been tied up with Chinese banks such as Bank of China,China Development Bank and The Exim Bank of China,Reliance Power said.

Every project will be built in two phases,each phase consisting of six units of 660 MW coal-fired super critical thermal power plants.

Shanghai Electric said it will deliver the equipment at the rate of three to four units a year,starting 2011.

Reliance Power may also tie up with the Shanghai Electric for setting up a manufacturing facility in India for power equipment.

“We are doing studies and very soon we would take a final decision based on the due diligence for this (manufacturing unit),” SEC President Zheng Jianhua told reporters here.

“The joint venture would look at,potentially,manufacturing (equipment) in India,” Ambani said.

If clinched,this would be the sixth joint venture company after Bharat Forge Alstom,Larsen and Toubro,BHEL and Siemens for power equipment manufacturing.

Reliance Power plans to increase its generating capacity to 25,000 MW by 2015,from 600 megawatts at present.

According to RPower website,coal for the Krishnapatnam power project in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh is planned to be imported from Indonesia. The project is “scheduled to come on-stream by September 2013,when the first unit is commissioned and the project is scheduled to be fully commissioned by October 2015.”

Shares of RPower ended down 2.44 per cent at Rs 154 a piece on Bombay Stock Exchange today,amid overall subdued trading.

The first unit of the Tilaiya ultra mega power project at Hazaribagh District in Jharkhand,”is scheduled to be commissioned in May 2015 and the project is scheduled to be commissioned by May 2017,” RPower said on its website.

The Chitrangi plant will be set up at Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh.

Today’s agreement with Shanghai Electric includes long term supply of spares,training of manpower,erection,testing and commissioning of boiler-turbine-generators and after sales services of the equipment.

Shanghai Electric currently manufactures equipment that can generate 2,30,000 MW of power.