Sanjiv Goenka (right) with Zhu Denian in Calcutta on Wednesday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury

Calcutta, Sept. 14: CESC Ltd has signed an overarching agreement with China’s Shanghai Electric Group that envisages joint ventures in thermal and offshore wind power plants.

Shanghai Electric has also bagged the contracts to supply boilers, turbines and generators (BTG) at CESC’s upcoming 600 megawatt (MW) power plant in Haldia.

The power utility arm of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka group and Shanghai Electric signed the two agreements today.

“With the long-term cooperation strategy in place, we could be looking at future tie-ups with Shanghai Electric in the form of mega power projects and wind power. Both firms would like to work with each other and this could lead to a joint venture in the future,” said Sanjiv Goenka, chairman of RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group. He, however, declined to give details on these projects.

Zhu Denian, vice-president of Shanghai Electric, said the company wanted to grow in India from merely an equipment manufacturer to partners in big power projects.

“We would like to expand our presence in India step by step. In the last seven years, 22,000MW of contracts have already been signed and implemented. With CESC, our short-term priority will be to supply boilers, turbines and generators for the Haldia project and then to provide operation and maintenance service,” he said.

“In the future, we are considering setting up an equipment manufacturing facility in India and enter into joint ventures in green power sectors — wind, solar and hydel,” Denian added.

Shanghai Electric has received orders for 30,000MW of BTG packages from Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power for its coal-based plants.

The company is supplying boilers, turbines and generators at CESC’s another 600MW project in Maharashtra.

Quality issues

There have been instances of power plants in Bengal facing difficulties with Chinese equipment. However, Denian said that the BTG packages would have lesser technical snags.