Hanjer Biotech Energies, a Mumbai-based waste management company, is setting up India’s first full-scale green power plant that will generate electricity from waste. The 15 MW plant at Surat in Gujarat will be run on refuse derived fuel (RDF). Hanjer processes about 9,100 tonnes of municipal waste a day across 20 cities at its 24 facilities.
The RDF for the Surat plant will be sourced from Hanjer’s waste processing units at Surat, Bhavnagar and Vadodara. RDF is considered “green” because it has minimal amount of plastic (around 5%). It is used as a substitute for conventional fossil fuels in boilers and is sold at र2 to र3 per kg, double the price of normal RDF.
Says Irfan Furniturewala, founder and promoter of Hanjer: “The RDF-based plant in Surat will be commissioned in about 15 to 18 months. It will incur a cost of र6.8 crore per MW.” Although this would be costlier than a normal coal-based power plant which costs between र3.5 and र5 crore per MW, today the problem in most of the thermal-based power plant is the availability of coal. Hanjer has already signed a power purchase agreement with the Gujarat government, which will purchase power from the Surat plant at र6.10 per unit.