At a time when the whole country including Odisha is reeling under acute power shortage, the 3000 Mw power plant of National thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) at Kaniha, the second largest power station in India, is forced to regulate generation due to less supply of coal.
According to sources, the power plant is in supercritical state having a coal stock for one day only as against the normal 15 days stock. There were 3.5 million tonnes of coal at its stock yard on April 1. But due to short supply of coal from Mahanadi Coalfield Limited (MCL), the stock has depleted to a level of just “hand to mouth”, forcing the company to slash generation from its six 500 Mw units.
The power plant which provides electricity to about 17 states gets coal through a Merry go Round (MGR) system from its linked Lingaraj coal mine and also by rail from other mines of Talcher coalfield.
“Instead of normal 3000 Mw generation per day we are now producing about 2500 MW at peak time and during non-pick time the generation further comes down to 2200 to 2300 Mw . This is due to less supply from feeding Talcher coalfield to Kaniha plant in last two months particularly during May and June”, said a top NTPC official.
He said, in May, the average drawal of coal was to the tune of 45000 to 50000 tonne as against the normal 55,000 tonne per day. The problem mainly due to non- availability of railway rakes because of which the supply was hit. The restriction on work hours of labourers in the summer also hampered the loading of coal at the sidings in Talcher, he added.
The plant now gets about 50,000 tonnes of coal per day including imported coal while the requirement is pegged at 60,000 tonnes in order to run all units in full load and also to spare some coal to build up stock, he informed.
Commenting on less supply from MCL mines at Talcher , Director (technical) of MCL A.K. Tiwary said, “we have enough coal at our sidings and NTPC can take as much coal it wants . We have also told them to transport coal by road if railway wagons are not available.”
