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In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Jayalalithaa said power cuts were primarily due to the shortfall in generation by central generating stations “including our joint venture with NTPC, and by the new thermal power projects under trial production and which are yet to be handed over by BHEL to Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (Tangendco).”
“The sudden and unanticipated drop of about 2,500 Mw can be directly attributed to central government agencies, including central generating stations and central public sector undertakings like NTPC, BHEL, Indian Oil Corporation and Coal India Ltd,” Jayalalithaa said in the letter.
She said “an unexplained” fire accident took place on November 16, 2013 in the North Chennai Thermal Power Station’s Unit 2 (600 Mw capacity), which had recently commenced trial power generation. This unit was under the control of BHEL and under-trial production had to be isolated, resulting in a further loss of generation of about 600 Mw.
A joint venture of NTPC and Tangedco, which is under the NTPC management, had commissioned two units of 500 Mw capacity each at Vallur near Chennai in November 2012 and August 2013, respectively. These units were producing about 800 Mw till recently. However, Unit 1 with a capacity of 500 Mw has not been in service from November 14 due to inadequate supply of coal from Talcher coal mines of Mahanadhi Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of Coal India.
The shortfall in coal supply also affects the thermal power stations of Tangedco that are entirely dependent on Coal India for their supply of indigenous coal.
Even though a thermal generation with 500 Mw capacity is available, the joint venture unit is idle for want of coal. Tangedco’s units have been able to tide over the problem because they had stockpiled coal, Jayalalithaa pointed out.
To add to its woes, Tamil Nadu gets only 777 Mw out of its share of 1,113 Mw from Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) owing to repairs and annual maintenance of some of the NLC units and effecting a shortfall of 336 Mw.
Similarly, one unit of Madras Atomic Power Plant and one unit of Kaiga Atomic Power Plant are also not in service, resulting in a further shortfall of 241 Mw.
In addition, PPN Limited, which is an independent power project based on naphtha as fuel and dedicated to Tangedco, is out of service due to inadequate supply of naphtha by Indian Oil Corporation.
This is a frequent occurrence, she said. According to her, the total loss of generation at central generating stations is around 2,500 Mw.
“It appears to be a very strange coincidence that while all the existing 12 thermal units of Tangendco are generating up to full capacity, the central generating stations and the joint venture unit are all performing dismally, simultaneously. This has resulted in widespread load shedding again in the state, which was free from load shedding till the first fortnight of November, 2013,” said Jayalalithaa.
This has resulted in widespread load shedding again in the state, which was free from load shedding till the first fortnight of November, 2013,” said Jayalalithaa.
She asked the Prime Minister to direct the power and coal ministries to take immediate effective steps to ensure that these power plants maximise their generation and restore power supply to Tamil Nadu.
“Continued poor performance by the Central PSUs causing shortfall in power supply would only lead the people of Tamil Nadu to come to the conclusion that there is a concerted conspiracy to keep the state in the dark,” she noted.
