Although the city's primary power distribution and generation company, CESC, on Wednesday indicated that the acute shortfall that it is facing may abate soon, sources at NTPC Farakka — a major generation unit in West Bengal — said that their operations may remain affected due to water shortage for a prolonged period.
Across the state, too, there is a serious shortfall in generation resulting in substantial power cuts. The West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (WBSEDCL) is attempting to buy power from other states to meet the gap, but “this is not an easy task as very few states are in a position to sell surplus power,” a WBSEDCL official said.
After experiencing a shortfall of 1200 Mw yesterday, the state’s shortfall today stands at 780 Mw. WBSEDCL has bought 300 Mw for the night from Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and some other states and another 100 Mw would be imported tomorrow. But that would not be enough to meet the growing shortfall, the official added.
With the mercury steadily rising, Kolkata's power demand has peaked at about 1610 Mw, an expected 10 per cent more than last years' requirement, CESC officials said. The unexpected, however, was the lack of available power across the grid, leaving CESC groping to meet the 400Mw shortfall, since the utility only generates about 1225Mw from its own units.
“The overall heatwave conditions across Eastern India have resulted in a huge shortfall of power in the grid,” a CESC spokesperson said.
Of the major sources that CESC procures power from, through West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company (WBSEDCL), NTPC's Farakka Super Thermal Power Station provides a substantial chunk.
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But operations there have been hampered as low water levels have been further reduced due to stipulations under the Indo-Bangladesh water sharing treaty. During the lean season, between March and May, water is shared between the two countries in an alternating sequence of 10-day periods, which has had an adverse impact on the water available to NTPC's Farakka plant.
“This is a seasonal constraint as the scarcity of water affects operations. Although the plant's generation capacity is 1600Mw, it can come down to much little as 650Mw during this period. As a result, the shortfall is likely to continue until the water level recovers,” a NTPC official said.
While West Bengal normally gets 488 Mw as its share from NTPC’s Farakka capacity, this figure has now come down to 210Mw.
This water-related glitch in West Bengal's power generation mechanism is in addition to the scarcity of rakes that, too, has had an impact on operations over the last few weeks.
In particular, state-owned utility, West Bengal Power Development Corporation Limited (WBPDCL), which also helps plug a certain percentage of CESC requirement, has previously blamed logistical constraints for its dwindling generation. Consequently, a number of its power plants have been left with dwindling coal stockpiles.
Officials of Coal India (CIL) are informally expressing their helplessness. According to them, acute shortage of wagons and adequate number of diesel engines is also adding to the problem. Two days back, a meeting of the Operating Coordinating Committee (OCC) was convened by the union government to sort out the problem where representatives of power generating agencies, rail and coal authorities were present.
However, CESC officials said that it was facing no such logistical or supply problem at any of its generation plants. “We had planned things in advance,” a spokesperson added.
But no immediate solution has been found to resolve the crisis. Thus the power distribution agencies like private run CESC and the state run WBSEDCL have resorted to regular load shedding in the city and in the districts.
Today, as a direct fall-out of that, irate mob attacked electricity supply offices in Burdwan, Asansol and Bolpur.