The paucity of coal is going to give a rude shock to Maharashtra on the power tarrif front, as the state owned power generation company Mahagenco is unable to run its plants at full capacity. Moreover, the distribution company Mahavitaran which is already facing huge shortages of 6,000 MW has bought additional costly power to plug the gap created by downfall in generation by Mahagenco.
Speaking to Business Standard, a senior official from Mahagenco said, “As we are getting coal only on day ahead basis to conserve the coal, we are not running our plants at full capacity. Normally during this time of year our generation is around 5,600 MW as the demand from agricultural sector shoots up in Rabi season. However due to scarcity of coal during non peak hours, we are lowering generation between 4,800 MW to 4,900 MW and during peak hours, increasing it to 5,100 MW to 5,200 MW.”
A senior official from state owned distribution company Mahavitaran said, “ In order to plug the gap created by lesser generation by Mahagenco, we have tied up 400 MW of power but this power is available at Rs. 9-10 per unit which means our bill for 400 MW for entire month comes around Rs. 300 crore whereas entire Mahagenco’s 5,500 to 6,000 MW of power is available to us for only Rs. 600 crore per month. If this situation persists, we will have no option but to approach the state power regulator and demand hike in tariff.”
The problem of scarcity of coal started with central government’s coal linkages committee in September that allocated a quarterly quota to Mahagenco which was less by 20 per cent of its requirement. As against the requirement of 3.2 million tons, the company got a quota of only 2.6 million tons. Besides this, the company was asked to increase the coal import from 1.51 million tons per anum to 3.3 million tons, said senior official from the state government’s energy ministry.
Reduction in coal allocation has not only hit the coal generation severely but is also going to increase the cost of generation as imported coal is almost five times costlier than domestic, as pointed out by the official.
State’s energy minister Dilip Walse-Patil has written a letter to union power minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Central Electrical Regulatory Commission (CERC) asking them for immediate intervention on the issue and we are hoping they will respond positively and swiftly, the official added.
