TN urges Centre to supply more coal to prevent power outages

Tamil Nadu Minister for Electricity P. Thangamani has urged the central government to increase coal supplies as originally promised to avoid blackouts since the current supplies are inadequate.

Thangamani also said the state-owned Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) had been advised to approach central public sector organisations to import coal to avoid blackouts.

In a letter on Wednesday, the minister urged the Union Minister for Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal to instruct Coal India Ltd and the railway authorities to supply 100 per cent of the coal linkages totalling a minimum of 15 rakes daily to manage the critical coal reserves at the state-owned coal plants.

According to Thangamani, the average dispatch of rakes from coal companies during September 2017 was only nine per day and during October this year was only 9.5 per day.

He said the current average coal stock at TANGEDCO's thermal power plants was around 3.3 days of requirement as on 11.10.2017 as against the normative level of 30 days.

Thangamani said the realisation of coal from Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL)/Talcher was only 50 per cent of the linkage and the realisation from other coalfields was also less due to various reasons.

"The domestic coal allotted against import substitution from ECL (Eastern Coalfields Ltd) has not materialised so far...," Thangamani said.

According to him, supplies of one million tonne from Singareni Collieries Company Ltd has not come for the past couple of months.

--IANS

vj/nir/bg