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A transformation called China

EM NEWS BUREAU ,  Friday, January 13, 2012, 16:58 Hrs  [IST]

Over the years, and rather oblivious to academic debates, Chinese equipment has silently but surely invaded the emerging Indian power market. In Chinese equipment, project owners have seen virtues like timely delivery and lower costs that Indian suppliers can never hope to offer, at least in the foreseeable future. Domestic suppliers have criticized and condemned Chinese equipment and have even moved government to intervene, to at least create a level-playing field if not stop Chinese imports altogether. The debates continue but so do imports of Chinese gear.

The boiler turbine-generator (BTG) market has seen much of Chinese participation. It is estimated that nearly 30 per cent of the thermal power plants to be commissioned in the ongoing XI Plan period will have BTG of Chinese origin. Though the government has promised to impose an additional import duty to reduce the disparity between local and imported equipment, China has already made most of the opportunity.

India's focus is now shifting from power generation to power T&D, and so is China's! China has learnt much from its experience in selling BTG equipment to India and would deploy these lessons in its next act. The power transformer market very much appears to be the next canvas on which Chinese characters will soon be visible in bold.

India's demand for power transformer of ratings 220kV and higher is going to accelerate sharply in the coming years. Although India has a plethora of distribution transformer producers, when it comes to high-rating power transformers, the players are very limited, and so is the existing manufacturing capacity. Although domestic players are gearing up with capacity expansions, it would take at least a few years for India to become self-sufficient. Till then, which could be the next three years, China has a huge attendant market that it will hate to miss.

China has at least 30 manufacturers producing 200kV-plus transformers. Local demand is reducing as the government is curtailing purchases by at least 20 per cent each year. The top ten transformer manufacturers of China have an aggregate installed capacity of 3.5 lakh MVA that is far more than India's total. The individual manufacturing capacity of leading names like TBEA, China XD Electric, Tianwei Baobian is in multiples of that of India's leading transformer maker.

China is perfectly aware of the policy situation in India that mandates "local manufacturing presence", and is now approaching the Indian market with due conformity. TEBA (Tebian Electric Apparatus Stock Company Ltd) has already announced its plan of setting up a transformer manufacturing facility in Gujarat with overall investment of Rs2,500 crore. Others may very well follow and India would find no clear technical ground to perform a national-interest saving act. In many ways, the Chinese transformation is worth observing.
 
                 
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