Shri Piyush Goyal, Minister of State, Independent Charge for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy and Mines inaugurated NTPC’s International Operation and Maintenance Conference IPS-2017 ‘Integration of Renewable Power in the Grid…Path Ahead’ in New Delhi. 
Speaking on the occasion Shri Goyal said we are looking for innovative ways to bring down cost of power from such forums having representation from entire power sector. Shri Goyal in his address spoke on importance of sustainability, improving efficiency in cost effective manner. He released an e compendium having extracts of papers to be presented in the conference along with learnings from ‘near miss trips’ from NTPC experience. Shri Goyal presented Business Excellence Awards to the top performing NTPC Stations Talcher Thermal, Rihand, Korba, Ramagundam and Vindhyachal. First ever generating unit of NTPC commenced generation at the flagship Singrauli power station, on the same day in 1982.
Shri A.S. Bakshi, Member CERC, Shri K.K. Arya, Member CEA, Shri Gurdeep Singh, CMD, NTPC and Shri K.K. Sharma, Director (Operations) were present on the occasion.
Distinguished Power Sector officials and Professionals ,Technical Experts from the industry representatives from USA, Germany, Japan, UK, Austria as well as from domestic players Tata Power, Reliance, Jindal Power, ONGC, NLC, BBMB Bhakra, THDC and many State Sector Power companies are participating in the conference. Power Sector Stake Holders CEA, CERC, APTEL, CPCB, manufactures and service providers GE, Alstom, BHEL, Hitachi, Toshiba, Dupont etc. are also associating. Twenty international papers and eighty two domestic technical papers from premier institutions like IIT Kharagpur, IIT Dhanbad, Jadavpur University shall be presented.