Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): At least three power generating stations in Madhya Pradesh were waiting for railways to augment rakes of coal to enhance the power generation in the state as on April 28 as per the latest update maintained by National Power Portal.
The three stations include- Sanjay Gandhi, Satpura and Shree Singaji thermal power plants. The three power stations had 5%, 12% and 14% of the actual stock of coal vis-à-vis normative stock.
Notably, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has requested the Centre for more railway freight wagons for supply of coal. The Centre suspended hundreds of trains on Friday for supply of coal across the state.
Energy expert, Rajendra Agrawal said the four power plants in the state including the abovementioned three and Amarkantak power plan had 2.60 lakh tones of coal. The daily need of the power plants was 80000 tones of coal. Thus, the reserve power coal with the power plants was for three and a half days.
However, he said, the power plants were running on the present supply of the coal. Like, it was 68000 tonnes a couple of days back.
According to Rajendra Agrawal, coal supply is not the only reason behind power outages or less generation of power.
He said one of the main reasons was that this year the heat wave was unprecedented which raised the demand of power supply by at least 20%.
Another reason, he said, unlike the past two years during the pandemic this year the farmers went for a third crop too after recovering from Covid-impact. There was lockdown in the past two years. This year, there was no lockdown and restrictions at all. Hence, farmers took the opportunity to sow the third crop. Hence, they needed more power for irrigation.
He said yet another reason was wrong decision taken by the power authorities who surrendered at least 1000 MW of power to Maharashtra and Gujarat in March this year while anticipating no power crisis ahead.
He said imported coal had gone costlier six to eight times. Hence, the power plants mainly in coastal areas in the country which depended on imported coal shut their power stations.
