Monsoon damps thermal power generation

With more of hydro power and from the spot market available, and rates lower, costlier thermal units have been shut for a while

Bumper rain this season and slowing demand has led to 16,000 Mw of thermal power generation capacity being shut down, close to 10,000 Mw of this for a month in the northern region.

Government officials say the peak power deficit came down to 1.9 per cent this June, from 2.9 per cent in June last year.

Sector executives said plants which generate costlier power were being backed down in favour of procurement from cheaper sources.

“Hydro is zero fuel cost and cheaper. Besides, power from pithead thermal plants is cheaper than plants in the north or south which are far from coal mines. This is a consumer-friendly situation as affordable power is available but it might hit the top line (revenue) of some power generators,” said a sector expert.

In the data provided by the four regional load despatch centres, most coal-run power units of states and of the Centre’s NTPC have been generating very little for a month. These plants are hoping to restart generation in a month, when demand might pick up due to the festive season, when there are fewer power cuts. By when, hydropower generation will also come down. The reason cited in the report of Northern Region Load Despatch Centre (NRLDC) for 39 plants is “less demand”. In the generation outage report of the southern RLDC, 17 plants are shut. The western one shows six shut. The eastern RLDC is the only one not suffering outage but the region is reported to be not facing a supply deficit.

Among the major plants shut are NTPC’s Dadri and Badarpur in the north, Simhadri and Ramagundam in the south, and Vindhayachal and Korba in the west. Among the private entities, Lanco and IL&FS’ plants are shut. State-owned thermal generating stations are shut in, among others, Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana.

NTPC, the country's largest generator, showed a decline in annual profit for a third straight year at Rs 10,243 crore in 2015-16. Its total income was Rs 71,696 crore, about 4.8 per cent less than that in FY15.  

Company executives had earlier told this newspaper that NTPC plants had to shut close to 12.9 per cent of its capacity in FY16 due to lower demand, compared to 8.9 per cent in FY15. “The demand for power has remained more or less the same as past years. The amount of thermal generation not operational is high as hydro is compensating,” said a senior executive in an NTPC unit in the north. Prices in the spot power market had dipped to Rs 1.9 a unit, as on Thursday.

The country’s total generation capacity recently touched 303,000 Mw, of which 211,000 Mw if thermal, another 42,848 Mw is hydro (stagnant for three years) and 42,849 Mw is renewable energy.