Technology Growth and Cost Trends of Power Stations in India

Although a developing nation, India has acquired a high level of competence in design and construction of power stations. This paper presents a post-occurence review of the growth of thermal power station technology in India and the trend of power station construction costs. The data presented in this paper were gathered during a survey of twenty power stations built during the last two and half decades of the 20^th century in different parts of this country. The survey revealed that the rise in power project costs, which was comparatively steeper during the last two decades of the 20^th century, has not been simply because of the rise in costs of basic materials of construction, labour charges or secondary costs like interest on institutional loans. The other, and equally important, reason is that there has been major changes in the design and construction during this time. The change was necessary for various reasons: to suit plans for gradual indigenisation of technology, to take care of the feedback from operating plants, to keep pace with latest concepts in plant design and to meet environmental requirements. Obviously, the consequent changes also caused increase in costs.