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
2,500 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.