BGR Energy wins contract from RVUNL

Chennai: Chennai-based BGR Energy has won a Rs 5,023-crore contract from Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, the electricity generation company of Rajasthan’s electricity Board.

The ‘engineering, procurement, construction’ contract is for putting up the 2x600 MW Kalisindh Thermal Power Project at Jhalawar, Rajasthan (near Kota). The scope of the contract includes design, engineering, supply of boiler, turbine and generator and ‘balance of plant’.

The Chairman and Managing Director of BGR Energy, Mr B.G. Raghupathy, said that the boilers and TG equipment will be bought from Dongfang of China. The value of the imported equipment is estimated at $405 million.

The value of material and services from within BGR Energy will be about Rs 2,000 crore, he said. With this order, BGR Energy’s order book swells to Rs 11,000 crore, which includes four balance of plant contracts of 500 MW each and two EPC contracts of 600 MW each, apart from contracts for supply of equipment for oil and gas industries.

Incidentally, both the EPC contracts were won against the only one other qualified bidder BHEL. (The other was the Rs 3,100-crore job for putting up a 600 MW project for TNEB.)

Dr S. K. Calla, Chairman and Managing Director, Rajasthan Vidyut, said that BHEL quoted about Rs 150 crore higher than BGR Energy.

Asked why Rajasthan Vidyut did not opt to go in for a supercritical boiler-based project, Dr Calla said that it was for the first time that Rajasthan Vidyut was putting up a project as big as 600 MW. The company wanted to play it safe by opting for a “proven technology”, he said.

Mr A. Swaminathan, President & CEO, Power Project Division, BGR Energy, said that the suppliers guaranteed a station heat rate of 2,220 kcal an unit and auxillary power consumption of 54 MW or 9 per cent. (Heat rate indicates the amount of heat needed to produce a unit of energy lesser the better. Auxillary power consumption is the power required to run the plant.)

A unique feature of the project is the cooling towers. The 200-metres high natural draft cooling towers will be the highest in Asia. It is taller than the 156-metre cooling tower at NTPC’s Simhadri plant, Mr Swaminathan said.

On the NSE today, BGR Energy closed at Rs 247.25 a share, up 13 per cent from the previous close of Rs 217.85.

With all these projects under the belt, BGR Energy is recruiting. At present, the company employs 1,100 people of whom 700 are engineers. Mr Raghupathy said that the company would employ about 1,000 more people, including some 500 engineers.

Apart from mechanical engineers, the company would need civil and instrumentation engineers too, apart from experts in SAP, he said.