Bulk ordering of 660 MW supercritical units: Award of supercritical units deferred till January 2011

Against the union government's previous contention of wrapping-up the award of contracts for the 660 MW supercritical units, proposed to be tendered via the bulk-tendering route, by July 2010, NTPC has given a fresh estimate for the award of both steam generator (SG) and turbines generator (TG) packages for these 11 units by January 2011. While in the Economic Survey 2009-10, released on February 25, 2010, the government indicated that the power major would complete the tendering process by the end of July this year, NTPC is presently in the process of evaluating the bids received for the TG package, apart from receiving the bids for the SG package. The firm will accept technical bids for the SG package till August 25, 2010 and open the bids on the same day to facilitate the subsequent receipt of the price bids for the package.

The delay in the award of these contracts stems from the fact that NTPC had to call fresh bids for the SG package on June 24, 2010, after the bid submitted by the consortium of L&T Power and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) was disqualified on technical grounds, which left only BHEL in the fray. NTPC has asserted that MHI should have formed a consortium with L&T and not L&T Power, which is a subsidiary and does not fulfill the criteria set forth in the bid documents. NTPC, in October 2009, invited two separate global competitive bids for sourcing 11 sets of boiler and steam turbine generators. BHEL and a consortium of L&T Power and MHI submitted bids for the boiler package and five companies -- BHEL, L&T Power-MHI, Bharat Forge-Alstom, Toshiba-JSW, Power Machine -- submitted bids for the turbine generator package. 

The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure (CCI) approved the induction of supercritical technology through bulk ordering on August 27, 2009. The Committee gave its nod to an order for 11 units of 660 MW, each, totaling to 7,260 MW, from NTPC, with regards to its upcoming projects, as well as on behalf of its joint venture companies and the state-run, Damodar Valley Corporation Limited (DVC). All these supercritical unit based projects would come up during the XII Plan period.