Centre comes to AP's rescue, arranges 800 Mw

The Centre has come to the rescue of Andhra Pradesh by offering 800 Mw from the eastern grid to help augment power availability in the state following chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy's appeal to the Prime Minister.

The state is facing a severe power crisis due to coal supply disruptions on account of strike in Singareni Collieries, resulting in a deficit of a record 56 million units as against the total demand of over 275 million units per day.

In addition, the Haryana government has also agreed to supply around 200 Mw round-the-clock from its Jhajjar power plant, the chief minister's office said here on Tuesday.

“The chief minister spoke to the principal secretary to Prime Minister Pulok Chatterjee over telephone last night and also to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier and sought additional power particularly to save the standing crops,” the chief minister's office informed in a press release. The supplies from eastern grid would be utilised to ensure uninterrupted power supply to consumers between 11 pm and 6 am daily.

The chief minister thanked the Prime Minister, Haryana government and the eastern grid authorities for responding to his request.

In a late evening development yesterday, Reddy also allowed the power utilities to procure additional 980 Mw to meet the demand in the current month, about 330 mw from gas power units using RLNG (regasified liquefied natural gas) and 550 Mw from other sources. All these initiatives are expected to improve the supply situation in the days to come.

Opposition parties, meanwhile, have mounted criticism against the government over the damage of standing crops under well irrigation across the state due to erratic power supply to the farm sector.

Generation in APGenco’s thermal stations has come down to 3,000 Mw as against the installed capacity of 5,093 Mw while the hydel generation has been reduced to 39 mu from a peak of 65 mu as the inflows into the Srisailam reservoir have dried up completely, according to APTransco .

The 21-day long strike has so far resulted in a production loss of 1.72 million tonnes of coal in Singareni coal mines, the key reason for the present power crisis in the state.The coal stock available at various thermal power stations is sufficient to run the plants for just three days, it said. The government is seeking 200,000 tonne additional coal from Western Coalfields to ramp up stock at various thermal power stations.

As the power generation within the state has got affected, the chief minister recently requested the Union power ministry to allocate an additional 500 Mw from the unallocated central pool following which AP has been drawing 185 Mw of additional power. The government is insisting on allocation of another 300 Mw from the central grid, according to the chief minister’s office.

The government is trying various options to ensure power supply to the agriculture sector and to domestic households from 6 pm to 6 am without outages, it maintained.