THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala State Electricity Board and NTPC Ltd inked an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) on Friday for establishing solar power plants at the NTPC’s Kayamkulam plant. In the first stage, a 15 MW ground-mounted plant will be established at Kayamkulam. The generated power will be sold to KSEB at prices not exceeding Rs 3 per unit. In the long run, the two agencies plan to scale up solar power generation to over 100 MW by establishing more plants on the NTPC land. NTPC director (commercial) A K Gupta and KSEB CMD N S Pillai signed the MoU on Friday in the presence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Electricity Minister M M Mani, NTPC chairman and MD Gurdeep Singh and Chief Secretary Paul Antony.
Fixed cost re-fixed at Rs 200 cr
The KSEB and NTPC also reached an agreement to re-fix the fixed cost payable by KSEB to NTPC for the NTPC Kayamkulam plant at Rs 200 crore. As per an order of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, the fixed cost was pegged at Rs 307 crore per annum which was deemed too hefty by KSEB. KSEB has not been scheduling power from the naphtha-fuelled plant due to the huge per-unit cost of the generated power. However, the fixed cost has to be paid whether KSEB purchases electricity or not.