So, there are a lot of different things being discussed on a case-by-case basis. That's the situation in a nutshell. In terms of pricing, the average price of a wet FGD system is roughly about – and I'm talking about average prices because some of the early projects had very low prices while some of the later projects have had much higher prices. It's also a function of the size of the unit, which impacts the cost per megawatt number. But it's roughly coming to about $60,000 to $65,000 per megawatt for a wet FGD system in U.S. dollars.
That is roughly about Rs 50 Lakhs for a wet FGD system. And as you know, the dry system costs anywhere from 60% to 70% less, but the cost of a wet FGD system from a capital cost standpoint is roughly about $40,000 to $45,000 per megawatt, which is somewhat what you also see for a seawater scrubber system. So now you can make your own calculations based on the market size as to what the potential could be for a dry scrubber system if all of them under 600 megawatts and those that are not coastal units or those that are more than 30 years old adopt a dry system.
Then finally, in terms of the ongoing operating cost, the biggest issue has always been the cost of lime versus limestone and so on and so forth, and whether the CAPEX – even though the CAPEX is lower – does the continued OPEX of a dry system eventually catch up and render it as being unfavourable. But in India, that is obviously the same issues that face India as well. So what are the biggest concerns in general concerning FGD adoption? Obviously, it is the legislation on pass-through costs. That is clearly an issue. The availability of high-quality limestone for a wet system, the short timeline. In many units, there's not enough space.
These are all old units, and therefore there's not enough space for a retrofit. Many of them were not designed with enough space for an FGD system. Additionally, many of them are old units. I mean, a lot of Indian plants are actually more than 25 to 30 years old. So clearly, they may not be motivated to do anything.
Secondly, as far as limestone is concerned, it's found all over India, but the good quality limestone is found in certain states like Rajasthan and Meghalaya. Transporting the limestone from Meghalaya is not exactly easy. It's a northeastern state which has a lot of hilly terrain, and transport connectivity is not very great. The purity of Indian limestone is also suspect. It's less than 80 percent. That means the gypsum quality is also poor, and therefore the gypsum offtake infrastructure is not yet very mature. Even though some of the initial plants may structure a gypsum agreement long term, they may just have to give it away for free because we think there'll be a lot of gypsum coming in pretty poor quality, and they may find it easier to just give it away as opposed to landfilling it. Hydrated limestone anywhere else in the world is roughly about four to five times the cost of a limestone scrubber.
So the average cost of limestone per kilogram is roughly about two rupees per kg, which is about five times the amount for lime. Then, among other things, some of the challenges that people will face in terms of a dry FGD include the availability of lime and experience with large units. Therefore, we expect that this would be a market for units less than 600 megawatts. The retrofit space available for a bag filter—many of them don't have that space.
There's also been some history about the bag filter performance on Indian fuels, so that also has to be addressed. And then there may be some high off-power issues related to that, you know. So, these are some of the challenges. However, like everywhere else, this is a very cost-sensitive market, and it's an extremely cost-sensitive market. Therefore, having that tremendous cost advantage is going to mean that dry units will have a distinct advantage, especially for some of the smaller units that are less than 600 megawatts.
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