25-year-old power plants to be replaced: Govt

New Delhi: All power plants which have completed 25 years of operations will be replaced with modern and environment-friendly ones to enhance production capacity, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said in the Lok Sabha.

He said the Centre has framed a guideline to replace all old power plants in a phased manner as their production capacity has slowed down. Frequent breakdowns, inefficiency and pollution are the main reasons behind the decision to replace the old power plants with modern and environment friendly ones in a phased manner, he said during Question Hour. Goyal said presently power situation in the country was not good but it was inherited from the previous government as the NDA government has taken charge hardly over two months ago. To a supplementary, he said 100 percent Foreign Direct Investment is allowed in power sector and the government would welcome more funds to be invested in that sector. Goyal said the Central Electricity Authority has received detailed project reports of 117 hydro schemes aggregating installed capacity of 55,900 MW since 2002-03. Out of these, 71 schemes aggregating to 38,740 MW were concurred and the Detailed Project Reports of 27 of hydro schemes with an aggregate installed capacity of 7,730 MW have been returned to the project authorities for re-submission after compliance of various observations of CEA, Central Water Commission, Geological Survey of India and other appraising agencies. "DPRs of 19 hydro projects with installed capacity of 9430 MW are presently under examination in CEA," he said.