Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Power woes: NTPC faces coal shortage, loses 325 million units per day

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, June 3, 2013: NTPC’s Simhadri super thermal power station here has been unable to generate power optimally since a month due to the acute shortage of coal supply, which can only add to the state’s power woes.

According to NTPC Simhadri sources, the generation loss due to shortage of fuel supply has been 325 million units as on Monday. The state government depends heavily on NTPC Simhadri, which has four units, each with the capacity to generate 500 MW.  Four units were commissioned in two stages. State gets total 1,000 MW generated from stage-I and 452 MW from stage-II.

Of 1,000 MW produced from Stage-II, other States as per  Gadgil formula Tamil Nadu gets  233 MW, Karnataka 208 MW, Kerala 95 MW and Puducherry 12 MW.  The unallocated power will be 150 MW, which will also be shared by the southern states.

 During the current financial year (2013-14), Simhadri station, which is maintaining 100 per cent availability, could utilise only 87.69 per cent capacity due to fuel shortage.

The average domestic coal receipt as on Monday was 23,661 mt/day against a requirement of 28,000 mt/day.  Simhadri station generated 1341 million units in April 2013, which is 92.83 per cent, by modulating the generation according to the receipt of domestic coal on a day-to-day basis.

NTPC gets coal from the Mahanadi coalfields, Singareni, Odisha and Indonesia.  NTPC Simhadri last year signed an agreement for purchasing 4.5 lakh tonnes of low caloric coal from Indonesia for three months while the State government too agreed last year to supply 7,000 tonnes per day besides the early availability of 3,500 tonnes from Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL).

The average day stock in April was 16,750 mt of coal. This situation further worsened during May as the average receipt of domestic coal dipped to 21,241 mt/day, restricting the station’s generation.


The average receipt of domestic coal in the last week of April was 20,375 mt/day, which is only 5.8 rakes per day and accounts for the monthly utilisation factor in May 2013 being 82.26 per cent only. 

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