Torrent to make Sugen world’s biggest gas-fired power plant

Inaugurating the country's biggest gas-based power project of 1,147 mw capacity at Sugen near Surat on Wednesday, Torrent Power Ltd said it would scale up the generation capacity by adding another 3,400 MW in the next five years.

Once the expansion is completed, it could become the world's largest gas-based plant at 4,500 MW.

Torrent chairman Sudhir Mehta told newspersons after the inauguration that the company is in the process of acquiring another 300 acres of land close to its Sugen plant. This expansion is a part of TPL's ambitious plan to become a 10,000-MW power generation company.

He added that TPL will have a total gas-based generation capacity of approximately 6,000 MW and coal-based capacity of 3,500 MW.

Torrent currently distributes over 10 billion units of power annually to Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Surat – the industrial and commercial hubs of Gujarat.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi said on the occasion that the state government is investing Rs5,000 crore for upgrading its power distribution system. The state's minister for energy and petrochemicals, Saurabh Patel, urged union petroleum minister Murli Deora to allocate more gas from the Krishna-Godavari Basin to Gujarat-based small and medium enterprises.

In response, Deora, who was present along with union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and minister of state for power Bharatsinh Solanki, said the SMEs of Gujarat would get an improved gas supplies.

He said the gas allocation had several priorities, which included fertilisers and power generation. ''After providing gas to these key industries all the rest of the small industries would get the regular supply of gas,'' said Deora adding that with the existing 11 crore gas customers, the government had planning to include additional 5.5 crore new LPG (liquefied natural gas) connections by 2025. Considering this, he emphasised on the pipe-based gas supply to customers.

Reaffirming his keenness on solar power, Modi appealed to the centre for setting up a solar energy park on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border, one of the sunniest parts of the country. Modi suggested that the project would benefit the Border Security Force deployed on the border of two states.

"We want to transform the state of Gujarat into an integrated solar generation hub for the entire nation," he said.