Commonwealth Games may strain Northern Grid

The forthcoming Commonwealth Games (CWG) in October is likely to aggravate the power crunch in the Northern Grid by almost 1,500 Mw.

The situation may well arise because the different power projects planned to provide power for a mega event like CWG have not been commissioned except for one unit at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh.

The CWG scheduled from October 3 to 14 in New Delhi is expected to require almost 5,000 Mw of power on a daily basis.

“The Centre had drawn a roadmap of providing power from proposed units at Dadri, Jhajjar (Haryana), Durgapur and Raghunathpur (West Bengal), Koderma (Jharkhand) and Delhi for the CWG. Only one unit of 490 Mw at Dadri has so far been commissioned,” All India Power Engineers Federation, Secretary General, Shailendra Dubey told Business Standard.

He maintained since the CWG would be understandably be provided power on a priority basis, the shortfall would have to be shared by all the power-deficient state drawing power from the Central sector, including UP.

“The total installed capacity of all these proposed power plants was about 7,180 Mw. Barring one unit of National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) at Dadri, others have yet not been commissioned,” Dubey said.

However, UP Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL) Director Distribution Jawahar Lal maintained that the state was unlikely to face any shortage of power during CWG. “We are getting enough power from the Central sector and by October, the demand for power is also likely to come down considerably,” he said.