Nalco declines to supply power to Gridco

National Aluminium Company (Nalco), which regularly supplies surplus power to Grid Corporation of Orissa Limited (Gridco) from its 960 Mw captive power plant (CPP), has declined to sell power to the state-owned bulk power trader stating that it has no surplus power.

Nalco has however assured the Orissa government that it would supply some power after its ninth unit starts commercial operations in May this year.

Nalco has also clarified that it may be in a position to supply 50- 100 MW of power in the future provided Gridco agreed for an upward revision in the purchase price. It may be noted Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) has recently revised the rate of power at which Gridco buys power from the CPPs.

However, the surplus power available with Nalco earlier has dried up with the company going for expansion of aluminium smelting capacity. Its own power requirement has gone up recently because of need to feed 75 new pots in the smelter plant. It is currently running seven out of eight 120 Mw units in its CPP to feed power to the smelter plant here.

The overall generation capacity of the CPP is around 800MW per day. While all the six 120 MW units run in full load, the seventh unit operates partially with the eighth unit being kept as a stand by unit to meet any eventuality.

Nalco plans to add two more 120 Mw units under its expansion project out of which one unit is going be commercially operational in May this year. The second unit would be operational by the end of July, sources informed.

According to Nalco sources, Gridco had requested the aluminium major to share some power from its CPP in order to tide over any possible power deficit in the state in the summer. Nalco had earlier supplied its surplus power to Gridco at the rate of Rs1.10 per unit.

Sources said, there have been inadequate supplies of coal to Nalco from the Talcher Coalfields. The average daily supply of coal to Nalco stood at 13,000 tonnes as against the linkage demand of 14,000 tonnes.

However, the Navratna PSU has built up a comfortable coal stock of around 2.7 lakh tonnes at its stockyard.