BNO Desk (By Tapan Moharana): The Koreans do not have a memorable experience in Orissa so far. But it has not disheartened them to dream on new projects in the mineral reach state. The good news is that a second South Korean investment is in the pipeline for Orissa. 

While the first one-the most hyped POSCO’s 12 mtpa  integrated steel project is yet to break the ground even after 5 years of its MoU with the state government, another project is lined up  by none other than the Korean government itself.

On July 15 “Korea East-West   Power (EWP) Co” a South Korean government owned power company signed an Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with the Sahara India Power corporation, a subsidiary of the Sahara India Pariwar for the later’s 1320 MW coal fired power project in Titlagarh,Orissa.

The MoA would meant for both Technical and financial partnership. Two parties will jointly invest in the proposed Rs.8000 Crore Power project, though the stakeholding pattern and other modalities of the partnership are yet to be decided.

“Yes ! we have signed an agreement with the EWP on 15th of this month for our Orissa project but we have yet to decide on the stakeholding pattern and other details like fund raising. It may be 50:50 or something else.” Mr.Ashok Bhargava,chief Executive Officer,Sahara India Power Co said.

“The 1320MW Coal fired thermal Power Project will be built on the Super-critical technology which mean it can use the lower grade coal(F-grade) and less polluted and EWP is a pioneer in building ultra super critical power projects.” He said.

Sahara India Power has signed an agreement with the state government of Orissa in February 2009 for setting up a 1,320-megawatt power plant at Titilagarh in Balangir district

Initially the 660-megawatt first phase of the project is expected to start by February 2013 and the remainder about six to eight months later, but as per the company’s latest calculation it would be delayed by more than one year.

“We are expecting the 660MW first unit would be commissioned by   April 2014 and the second unit by October 2014. The project will require 950 Acres of land. The land acquisition work is being done by the Industrial Development Corporation of Orissa (IDCO) on behalf of the company and is expected to be completed by November this year.”Mr.M.S.Parija, technical consultant of the project said.

He maintained that, the plant will use 50cusec water per day and is planned to be sourced from the Tel river. Also it will consume 6.25 million tonnes of coal per year. The company is hopeful of getting a coal block allocation in the state.

Unlike most of the other power projects the company has decided not to buy Chinese power equipments. “We may import the equipments either from US Korean or French companies. But final decision will be taken with consultation with our Korean Partner.”Mr Bhargava Said.

On the other hand the partnership with Sahara Power is a part of EWP’s long term plan to be one of the major Independent Power Producers in the overseas market by making aggressive inroads into global markets with a target to have 1,000MW in 2012 and 2,000MW in 2014. As one of its ways, EWP has set a corporate vision to increase the revenue of overseas projects up to 250 billion won(USD 208 Million), some 5% of gross revenues of the company by 2012.

In order to accomplish this vision, EWP has declared its strategic time frames with an enhancement program to support the goal phrase by phrase.

EWP has already signed a MoU with Tata Power and the MoU will help in identifying and the execution of Operation and Maintenance (O&M) opportunities relating to third party generation assets in Asia, Middle East and Africa.

According to experts Indian power companies are seriously looking for cutting age technologies like super-critical(SC) and ultra super critical(USC) for their power projects. These technologies make the plants more efficient and economical. Super critical technology will result in saving of about 4% of fuel and correspondingly less emission.

Also, these technologies use the lower grade coal. On August 2008 the Government of India launched the super-critical power programme in lines of the developed countries.

To get access to these state-of the art technologies Indian companies form Joint-Ventures with foreign companies who have either patent holders of these technology or pioneered in this sector. On the other hand foreign power companies see this as an opportunity to enter the fast growing Indian power market.