Ntpc Seeks Full Capacity Utilisation At Farakka Power Station

National Thermal Power Corporation has built up a strong case for operating its 1,600-mw Farakka power station at full capacity.

The corporation says full capacity utilisation will make Farakka power the cheapest in the eastern region.

The National Thermal Power Corporation argument will be debated at a meeting of the Operational Coordination Committee of the Eastern Region Electricity Board (EREB) in Calcutta next week.

The committee meets to prepare a proper operation schedule for the power stations of the region.

Eastern regions power stations are now operating at such a level that there is more generation than the system can absorb.

The meeting will be crucial, since the last full meeting of Eastern Region Electricity Board in Bhubaneswar had failed to evolve a consensus on the schedule.

Some Eastern Region Electricity Board members had accused the National Thermal Power Corporation of trying to snatch away the demand from the state electricity boards by demanding a higher generation.

All state power agencies, which had been depending heavily on National Thermal Power Corporation power rather than their own generation, were forced to re-activate their plants after the corporation began regulating supply in late January to force them to cough up dues.

The state agencies are now unwilling to scale down generation to give National Thermal Power Corporation the chance to fully utilise the capacity of its power plants.

This has led to a high system frequency, which is dangerous for the plants. In stead of the ideal 50 cycles a second, the system frequency is now hovering around 52 cycles a second.

The Farakka power once the unit starts operating at full capacity will become the cheapest as the tariff for the hydro-electricity from Bhutans Chukha station is being raised from Rs 0.50 a unit to Re 1 a unit from April 1. The effective cost of this power will be Rs 1.25 a unit, since Power Grid Corporation is raising the transmission charges from 21 paise to 25 paise a unit.

The Farakka power, claims National Thermal Power Corporation , will cost Re 1 to Re 1.10 a unit if its five generating units are allowed to operate at full capacity. With 15 paise a unit going towards the transmission cost, the effective tariff works out to Rs 1.15-1.25 a unit.

The eastern region power system, which has a surplus of 1,000 mw, cannot sell more than 600 mw outside the region. The three state electricity boards of the region realise that they must work hard to meet the suppressed demand for power in their area.

In Bengal alone, a demand of over 250 mw has remained bottled-up due to the inadequate transmission and distribution network. There are similar constraints in Bihar and Orissa.