11.1 C
London
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
HomeNewsIndia NewsIndia explores 'cheap power' sales to neighbours

India explores ‘cheap power’ sales to neighbours

Date:

Related stories

India top court pulls up yoga guru Baba Ramdev over misleading ads

The supreme court on Tuesday (19) directed the personal...

International Yoga Festival concludes at Parmarth Niketan

THE week-long International Yoga Festival at Parmarth Niketan Ashram...

Amitabh Bachchan admitted to hospital in Mumbai

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has been hospitalised in Mumbai, according...

Obscure trust links India’s top firms with Modi’s election war chest

Behind the doors of a small, nondescript office in...

Modi praises ‘new Kashmir’ on first visit in five years

JAMMU AND KASHMIR has been transformed and integrated with...

India is exploring selling “cheap power” to its South Asian neighbours and Myanmar on a long-term basis and wants state utility NTPC to expand overseas, its power minister said on Tuesday.
Indian companies such as Reliance Power Ltd and Adani Power Ltd have already signed agreements to supply power to Bangladesh, where New Delhi is fighting for influence with China. India also sells some electricity to Nepal and Myanmar, but power minister R.K. Singh said it could sell more.
“Neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh are viable markets … where the per-unit cost of electricity is very high,” Singh said in a statement released by the power ministry.
“There is huge opportunity to export cheap power to neighbouring countries which will be beneficial for the entire region,” he said.
The ministry would look at sending teams to those countries to assess demand for power imports, he said.
Singh urged India’s top utility NTPC to set up power plants in other countries and “become the world’s largest power producer”, but did not say where it should expand.
India became a net exporter of electricity in 2016, although it also imports from neighbouring Bhutan.
Singh, however, said its power surplus would start to decline once all households are connected. Currently around 300 million of India’s 1.3 billion people are without electricity.
“If you look at the entire power sector, the demand has been suppressed because not everyone is connected,” Singh said. “We have just started taking off and are going to enter double digit growth. What we see as excess capacity today may not turn out to be enough if we unlock that demand.”
Many Indian power companies have struggled to repay loans in the past three years after expanding aggressively at the beginning of this decade, as a combination of tepid demand and uneven coal supplies hit their operations.

Subscribe

- Never miss a story with notifications

- Gain full access to our premium content

- Browse free from up to 5 devices at once

Latest stories

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

16 − 9 =