According to Mr KC Venugopal Minister of State for Power, acute coal shortage, due to depleted imports and gas to fire the turbines being reduced to a trickle, has led the country to suffer a generation loss of nearly seven billion units in the April-June quarter this year.

He said “During April-June 2012 the power utilities have reported a generation loss of about 2.9 billion units due to shortage of coal and 4 billion units due to shortage of gas.”

He added that there is an overall shortage of power in the country in terms of energy and peaking power. The shortage varies from state to state on month to month, day to day and hour to hour basis depending upon the demand and supply of power.

The situation of coal stocks is so critical that 33 out of 89 power plants in India have super critical coal stocks meaning these thermal power plants barely have coal stocks that can keep its plants running for just four days.

The Central Electricity Authority, the apex watchdog that monitors India power plants has reported that most of the plants that have super critical or critical stock positions because of less receipt of coal from Coal India. These include plants like Badarpur Thermal Power Stations, Unchahar TPS, Ukai TPS, Bhusawal TPS and Talcher TPS. About 17 power stations are suffering from near depleted stock due to fewer imports.

The gas-run power plants have also suffered as Reliance Industries Eastern offshore KG-D6 gas field output has dropped to 29 units as against a planned 80 million units leading to short supply of gas run power stations in several western Indian states.

Overall, the country witnessed a peak power shortage of 9% from April to June this year. Peak power deficit is the shortfall in generation capacity during the time when the electricity consumption is the maximum.

Source - newindianexpress

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