AP for sharing of extra cost on coal imports

APTransco will have to pay additional Rs 85 cr a year

The state government is expected to write to the Union energy ministry seeking distribution of the additional cost on account of imported coal across all the central generation stations.

With the Centre's recent decision to import coal for the coastal thermal stations, APTransco, the state power utility, is forced to pay close to an additional Rs 85 crore a year towards purchase of power from the 1,000-mega watt Simhadri Thermal Power Plant.

As per the Centre's guidelines, the Simhadri plant at Visakhapatnam has to use a mix of 20 per cent imported coal.

The entire power generated by Simhadri station is allocated to Andhra Pradesh unlike the arrangement of other NTPC stations where the power is being shared among the states as per the Gadgil formula.

This means that extra cost on fuel in the Simhadri plant will be transferred to APTransco. In this case, the additional cost is calculated at 12 paise per unit.

Taking exception to this situation, APTransco recently wrote a letter to the Union energy ministry to distribute the differential cost on account of expensive imported coal among all the NTPC stations which constitute a combined installed capacity of over 18,000 mw in the form of surcharge.

When the move to utilise imported coal for the power stations located in coastal areas is directed to ease the coal shortage in the country, the burden of the decision has to be equally shared, the Transco officials feel.

The APTransco's suggestion, which is primarily driven by its concern on the additional cost, is obvious from the fact that, according to its own calculation, the additional cost per unit will come down to around 5-6 paise if the Union energy ministry agrees to adjust the additional cost of imported coal across all the central thermal stations.

According to the officials, chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy may also write a letter on similar lines to the Centre.

APTransco H1 supply up 19%

Industrial energy supply by APTransco in the first half of the current financial year has gone up by 18.85 per cent with a corresponding increase in revenue by 20.66 per cent over the previous year during the same period.

Total high tension(HT category) sales in the state during the first six months stood at 5466.3 million units(mu) as compared to 4599.24 mu during the same period last year.

Imrovement of quality and reliability of power supply through over 900 separate industrial express feeders has helped the Transco in increasing HT sales, according to Dinesh Kumar, joint managint director of APTransco.

The revenue realisation per unit has been improved from Rs 2.14 paise in 2001-02 to Rs 2.73 paise during the current fiscal, he said in a press release.