The government on Thursday revised its target of power capacity addition to 90,000 MW in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12), up by 11,423 MW from the earlier estimate of 78,577 MW, in order to meet the growing demand of electricity in the country.
"We will add 90,000 MW by the year 2012 to meet electricity demand of the nation," Union Minister of Power Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters on the sidelines of a FICCI event in New Delhi.
Out of the earlier target of 78,577 MW of capacity, projects totalling 63,312 MW are under implementation, of which 18,177 MW are in the private sector.
However, this does not include captive generation projects, and projects which are yet to yield benefits during the 12th Plan Period (2012-17), such as three ultra mega power projects.
Work on 32 coal blocks having total extractable reserves of 9,916 million tons allotted to various state and central public sector units and Independent Power Producers (IPPs) is in progress. These blocks are capable of feeding 29,000 MW.
"Along with thermal and hydro capacity addition, we are also now eagerly looking forward to very fast developments on the nuclear side in the wake of the very important diplomatic breakthrough that the country has achieved with the NSG waiver," he said.
On the distribution side, the minister said, two massive programmes have been taken up. Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana was cleared for implementation during the 11th Plan period at a cost of Rs 28,000 crore (Rs 280 billion).
Under the programme, around 1,25,000 villages are to be electrified and 2.34 crore (23.4 million) below poverty line households will be provided connections free of charge.
Recently, the Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme has also been cleared for implementation in its revised form, which focuses on performance in terms of loss reduction.
In order to provide impetus to the power distribution sector, Power Secretary Anil Razdan said, "We are planning to make distribution sector modern with the help of information technology, and are also planning to make IT-based database monitoring compulsory."
On the Ultra Mega Power Project front, he said, "We are looking over enlarging the ultra mega projects, which is dependent on availability of port locations."
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