Hyderabad-based Greenko Rayala Wind Power Pvt. Ltd. has come forward to bear the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) expenses of the TTD windmills at Tirumala for a period of 10 years and entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) accordingly.
The TTD has six windmills each with a capacity of 1.25 MW atop Kakulakonda, abutting the Gogarbham water reservoir.
As per the understanding, the company will bear all the material, incidental and other charges, excluding insurance on assets, and supply the entire power generated at the plant to the TTD without any cost.
Expected savings
The move is expected to save the TTD about ₹2.12 crore annually, besides enabling it utilise the entire power generated from the mills free of cost.
Earlier, Coimbatore-based Suzlon Global Services, which had been entrusted the O&M of the windmills for six years on tender basis from May 2014, generated around 589.56 lakh units of power, while a whopping ₹21.29 crore was incurred by the TTD towards its O&M charges, excluding the insurance charge of assets.
The TTD, which found that the lowest tariff paid to the APSPDCL stood at ₹5.06 per unit against ₹2.23 per unit being the cost of its production, decided to invite tenders for O&M of the mills for a period of another five years.
But the TTD had cancelled the tenders following a drastic dip in power consumption due to COVID-19 (as restrictions were imposed on the number of pilgrims allowed to travel up to the temple) coupled with aging machinery and other administrative factors.
It was at this juncture that the CEO and MD of Greenko Energies Pvt. Ltd. had come forward to undertake the O&M of the windmills “free of charge” and part with the entire power generated at the plant to the TTD, and after detailed negotiations entrusted the responsibility to its subsidiary firm, the Greenko Rayala Wind Power Pvt. Ltd.
