Public, private power plants shut 4,000 Mw in Western region

Five states likely to face power shortage

Just a day after Supreme Court ruled that Tata Power's ultra mega power plant and Adani Mundra power plant cannot levy additional power tariff due to fuel cost going up, around 3,000 Mw of power generation in the western region was closed down citing coal supply shortage.

As per the report from the Western Regional Load Despatch Centre in Mumbai, Lanco, NTPC, MahaGenco and India Bulls with a cumulative capacity of 4,550 mw were unable to supply power in the western grid on Wednesday.

This could lead to potential power crisis in five states vis a vis Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Goa and union territory Daman & Diu.

The report mentioned that Adani Power also shut 2,700 mw of its Mundra plant on Thursday afternoon, which made the matters worse.

“From afternoon of 27.08.2014 the generation availability has further reduced by 2.700 Mw because of closing down of units in APL-Mundra. The 330 Mw unit #2,3 and 4 of APL Mundra have been closed down reportedly on coal shortage. The 660 Mw units # 7, 8 and 9 (stage-3) have been closed down reportedly on account of payment default of Haryana utilities.

Among the defaulters is also the 4,260 Mw Vindhyachal power plant of state owned NTPC, which had pressed the panic button last week saying that two units each of 210 Mw and two each of 500 Mw are not operating due to coal shortage and rest working on half of their capacity.

NTPC’s Vindhyachal power plant is one of the six plants of the company which were facing critical shortage of coal. In a letter to the power ministry last month, NTPC said six of its power plants had reached a critical level of coal stock, and these are Rihand, Vindhyachal, Sipat, Simhadri, Ramagundam and Singrauli with a combined capacity of 16, 840 Mw.

Mundra based ultra mega power plant (UMPP) of Tata Power also reportedly shut two units of 800 mw each. But the company officials said the units were not shut but tripped due to technical snags. "Tata Power’s Coastal Gujarat Power Limited (CGPL) would like to inform that it's maintaining declared capacity. However Unit #2 of the UMPP has been down due to a boiler tube leakage while Unit #4 got down due to reheater tube leakage today. 2400 MW is functional. CGPL would like to add that it continues to look for early resolution to the ongoing issue of under-recovery of fuel price," said the statement issued by Tata Power.

Adani Power did not respond to the questions sent on coal shortage and payment delay from the Haryana utilities.