One of the major power company’s in the country, NTPC, who are supposed to be introducing a public follow on offer on Wednesday, have been able to secure the approval for the addition of capacity worth 315 MW using solar projects which are a part of their strategy for diversifying the mix of electricity generation. The company, which plans to have a total installed capacity of close to 75,000 MW by the year 2017 which is up by 45,000 MW from it’s current installed capacity, has said that they will be adding up to 1,000 MW up to this time only by the use of various renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, biomass and small hydro plants.

RC Shrivastav, the director of human resources had said, “We have been able to obtain the approval of the board for an addition of 315 MW to our current capacity using solar energy.” NTPC also wishes to install a hydrpower plant with a capacity of 9,000 MW by 2017 as well as a nuclear plant that will have a capcity of 2,000 MW. By doing this, the company hopes to have a larger diversification of it’s fuel mix where around 70% will come from coal, 14% from gas, 12% from hydroelectricity, 3% from nuclear and 1% from various renewable sources of energy by the year 2017. The company has also signed the memoranda of understanding for the Karnataka government which will allow them to develop wind projects and they have also signed with Andaman and Nicobar for developing solar energy projects. Also, the company plans to explore wind & solar power generation in a lot more detail in projects based in Rajasthan & Gujrat.

When talking of renewable energy, the company plans to add a capacity of 650 MW to it’s total from wind, 350 MW from hydro and the rest of the capacity addition is supposed to be coming from various geo-thermal, biomass and solar sources. Shrivastav also said that NTPC was going to open a bulk tender for eleven supercritical units, 660 MW each, by Feb 12th. This tender was floated during October 2009 so that the equipment could be gathered. Here, there was also 9 units from the coal fired plants of NTPC as well as 2 units that came from the Damodar Valley Corporation.  This tender involves a condition that the bidder selected has to base their manufacturing unit for the main equipment like boilers & turbines in India so that manuacture of these materials could be encouraged indigeneously.