Project EPC contractor Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) has recently placed orders valued at over Rs.600 crore on sub-contractors for the upcoming Yadadri supercritical thermal power project in Telangana.
According to information available with T&D India, BHEL, in July 2020, has awarded various contracts amounting to around Rs.630 crore relating to the 5×800-mw Yadadri supercritical power project coming up at Damaracherla in Nalgonda district of Telangana.
The project, with an investment outlay of Rs.30,000 crore, is owned by state power utility Telangana State Power Generation Corporation Ltd (TSGENCO). The Yadadri power plant is designed to run on both domestic and imported coal. While the domestic coal will be supplied by Singareni Coal Collieries Ltd, the imports component will be contracted from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa.
The contracts under discussion were awarded by BHEL’s Power Sector Southern Region (PSSR) Division. An order worth nearly Rs.190 crore has been placed on Gammon Engineers & Contractors Pvt Ltd, relating to various works on the natural draft cooling towers. It is learnt that Paharpur Cooling Towers and NBCC (India) were also in the fray for this contract.
Hyderabad-based Power Mech Projects has been awarded three contracts together valued at around Rs.445 crore. Two of these contracts relate to the main boiler component, while one relates to the coal handling plant. Other bidders in the fray for the coal handling plant included L&T Geostructure LLP and Shankaranarayana Constructions Pvt Ltd. For the main boiler contract, contenders included PCP International and Texcel Engineers.
A relatively smaller contract of around Rs.7 crore was also placed on Dinesh Logistics. This was for transportation of a 250-tonne crawler crane from a project site at Vijaywada in Andhra Pradesh to the Yadadri project site.
Originally envisaged for completion (two units out of five) by mid-2020, work on the Yadadri project got delayed for a variety of reasons. The project is taking shape on 2,800 acres of land out of which three-fourths is forest land falling under the Veerlapalem forest block. BHEL had to seek fresh forest clearance as the original environmental impact assessment (EIA) report had inadequacies. In October 2017, BHEL received a revised letter of intent and physical work on the project could begin thereafter.
The Yadadri power project is very crucial in making Telangana energy-sufficient. This project was amongst the early initiatives launched in 2014 by the then newly-formed state of Telangana.
In January 2020, there was reportedly a review meeting between BHEL and TSGENCO on the Yadadri power project, which was missing its completion deadlines. BHEL, reportedly assured TSGENCO, that all the five units will be commissioned by mid-2023.
The main EPC contract was placed on BHEL by TSGENCO in June 2015. It is worth mentioning that the Yadadri EPC contract, valued at Rs.17,950 crore (at the time of placement), was the single-largest contract in BHEL’s corporate history. It is also believed to be the largest contract in India’s capital goods sector.
BHEL is also the EPC contractor for the 4×270-mw Bhadradri thermal power project of TSGENCO. The first unit of this project was commissioned in June 2020 and the remaining three units are on track. BHEL also commissioned the 1×800-mw Kothagudem supercritical power plant for TSGENCO in January 2019, in a record time of 46 months.
(Featured photograph for illustration only)
