Hit by fuel shortage, the country's largest power producer NTPC is generating as much as 10% less electricity, a top company official has said.
Noting that the fuel situation is very bad, NTPC Chairman and Managing Director Arup Roy Choudhury said it was hurting the company.
"We are running around every week... You can see, we are also most generating may be 7, 8 or 10% less than we could have because of fuel shortage," he told PTI.
State-owned NTPC has an installed generation capacity of 36,014 MW, with coal-fired plants alone accounting for 28,195 MW. Last fiscal, the company generated 220.54 billion units, accounting for more than 27% of total electricity generated in the country.
The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) data shows that as many as 37 thermal power stations had coal stocks for less than seven days as on March 20.
On the back of acute coal shortage impacting the power sector, the government recently has initiated various steps, including announcement from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) last month that Coal India would ink FSAs before March-end, for power plants that have been commissioned up to December last year.
Meanwhile, Choudhury said the company is targeting a capital expenditure of Rs 20,900 crore for 2012-13. All the requisite funds have been tied up.
On possible capacity addition next fiscal, he said, "We are averaging about 3,000 MW. That is the optimistic figure."
For the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17), NTPC would be looking at a capital expenditure of Rs 2,15,000.
NTPC expects to have a total generation capacity of over 1,28,000 MW by 2032.
