No respite from power shortage anytime soon

With the mercury rising steadily, the city's respite from power cuts may well be short-lived as the primary problem that is leading to the power scarcity is yet to be ironed out.

Although CESC — which distributes all, and produces a part, of Kolkata's electricity — is currently able to bridge the power shortfall, it is unlikely that the current mechanism will be able to sustain itself without glitches through summer months.

While CESC is able to produce about 1,225 MW everyday, the city's daily peak power requirement is in the range of 1,500 MW. To plug the gap, the firm procures power from utilities such as the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Limited (WBPDCL). But this requirement has been growing between 6-8 per cent, quarter-on-quarter, recently.

However, WBPDCL itself has been facing difficulties primarily due to an inadequacy in the number of rakes that the Railways provide for transporting coal to the generation units. Consequently, certain crucial power plants have been left with perilously low coal reserves that may be unable to last through contingencies such as a spike in power requirements.

“We are currently running on a day-to-day basis and some of our (power) plants are in the super-critical range. It is not a comfortable situation and the desired rake frequency has not been attained,” a WBPDCL source said.

Specifically, it is understood that the Bakreswar Thermal Power Station, with an installed capacity of 1,050 MW, and the 600MW Sagardighi unit continue to be affected due to the logistics bottleneck. Some officials feel that the overall Railway infrastructure currently in place to service these facilities is inadequate.

Even though WBPDCL managing director Debashis Sen admitted that there was a mismatch between rake requirement and availability, he remained optimistic that the situation will ameliorate soon.

“Our daily requirement is 15 rakes but the average through February was about 12 rakes per day. We are pursuing the matter with all concerned and do trust that things will improve,” Sen said.

It is another matter that Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of mining major Coal India Limited, which supplies a large portion of WBPDCL's requirement, may produce upwards of 100 million tonnes this fiscal.

Clearly, the movement from the mine to the generation units needs some elbow grease if Kolkata is to have uninterrupted power supply this summer.