Express News Service reported that power crisis in Andhra Pradesh has deepened further with the power supply deficit touching 35 million units on Thursday.

It is likely to worsen as the NTPC has shutdown its seventh unit of 500 MW at Ramagundam on Friday evening due to short supply of coal arising out of the strike of Singareni workers.

Due to closure of its seventh unit, the NTPC Ramagundam Thermal Power Plant is producing 1,528 MW against its capacity of 2,600 MW.

Sources said that the power plant has coal stock that will last only for two days but more coal rakes are expected from neighbouring states over the next couple of days.

Both the NTPC units at Ramagundam and Simhadri unit 3 were running near to technical minimum to ensure that they are not shutdown completely.

All the four distribution companies have been instructed to enforce one day power holiday and evening load restrictions to all industries apart from giving only six hours supply to agriculture instead of seven hours.

Sources informed that unscheduled and unofficial power cuts will be imposed for more hours where the overall power cuts to the industrial sector will account for more than two days, while power will not be supplied for more than five hours to agriculture sector.

According to APTransco officials, the APGenco has supplied about 74.15 MU from thermal power units to the Grid and 39.17 MU through hydel generation.

Apart from making efforts to acquire coal from Mahanadi Coalfields Limited and Western Coalfields Limited efforts were also being made to procure imported coal of 100,000 tonnes.

(Sourced from The Indian Express)