Breakdown in units, Rajasthan power crisis worsens

The shortage of coal in the state has worsened in the past few months. Later on Tuesday night, the state got into a power crisis due to a shortage of coal and breakdown in some major units which led to a reduction of power.

Though by Wednesday afternoon the position was improved and officials informed that no load shedding was being done, the crisis still prevails, informed the sources.

Officials informed that there was an outage of around 4000 MW capacity which has resulted in acute shortage of power due to the closing of 1200 MW Kalisindh, 1200 MW Adani 500 MW Suratgarh, 250 MW NLC Barsingsar, 250 MW Chabra, 180 MW RAPS, 200 MW Kota, 135 MW Rajwest units.

There was a possibility that power companies may resort to load shedding on a rotation basis. However, by Wednesday the efforts yielded positive results. Officials informed that they were keeping the fingers crossed and were getting some power to increase the supply, attempts were also being made to buy the power from power exchange.

Coal crisis for power plants is not new. The condition of coal stock in the plants is almost same for last 8-10 months however that time it was being managed easily as the power demand was less. However, now the need for coal has increased.

To streamline the system of supply of coal to the power plants, meetings between the power utilities, Coal India and railways were held in New Delhi on April 11. Thereafter a meeting will be held in Kolkata on April 12. In these meetings, officials from Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RVUNL) also participated.

Shortage

There was an outage of around 4000 MW capacity which has resulted in acute shortage due to the closing of 1200 MW Kalisindh, 1200 MW Adani 500 MW Suratgarh, 250 MW NLC Barsingsar, 250 MW Chabra and other units.