Power outages on cards as coal reserves dry up
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2005 12:21:37 AM]
NEW DELHI: Be prepared for power shortages. The power crisis in the country is far from over, with coal shortages disrupting power production. Six plants have coal reserves to last less than four days. Among them, NTPC’s Korba plant, which has a capacity of 2,100 MW has no reserve.
The 75 power plants require a reserve of 18 MT of coal, though at present the reserves are at 9.662m tonnes. Given the situation, power majors NTPC, Reliance Energy and other private firms along with various state electricity boards will import about 13.25m tonnes of coal this fiscal to tide over the crisis.
However, the situation will take at least six to seven months to ease, as logistics of transporting imported coal is being worked out.
While six thermal power stations are running with super critical coal stock of less than four days, 16 others have critical coal stocks of less than a week. Coal shortage has forced NTPC to shut one 500 MW unit at Talcher plant in Orissa. Electricity generation has also been affected at NTPC’s 2,000 MW Singrauli, 2,100 MW Korba, 1,000 MW Simhadri, 3,000 MW Talcher STPS and 460 MW Talcher (old) plants, which have coal stocks of less than 4 days.
NTPC will import 3.98m tonnes of coal and has already mandated MMTC to import the fuel. Other companies that would import coal include Maharashtra State Electricity Board (1.38 MT), Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (1.56 MT), GSECL (1.38 MT), REL (0.42 MT) and Punjab SEB (0.50 MT).
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