Thermal power plants back on track

Chennai: The state might get a little reprieve from prolonged hours of power cut with thermal power plants, whi­ch were under repair, starting generation one after another.

One 500 MW unit of the Vallur thermal power station, a joint venture bet­ween National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Tamil Nadu Gener­ation and Distribution Cor­p­oration, will restart generation on Tuesday night, said a senior official of NTPC.  

The Unit-I of Vallur plant has been under forced outage since November 14 due to coal shortage and depriving state of its share of 375 MW from the unit. Acco­rding to a senior NTPC official, the unit was shutdown following coal shortage.

“We are getting our coal from Mahanadi Coalfields in Odisha via Pradip port. Due to cyclone Phailin and workers’ protest in the coalfields, we did not receive our coal consignment on time. It led to shutdown of the unit,” the official said.

The 2X500 MW Vallur station requires 13,400 tonnes of coal per day. The thermal power station meets 53 per cent of its coal need from domestic coalfields and remaining through import. “Since we have rec­ei­ved a consignment of coal, we will be starting ge­n­e­ration from Tuesday night,” the official said.

Shortage of coal in central generating stations like  Talcher, Simhadri and Ramagundam  has been affecting power supply to the state. The latest coal stock position, as on Nove­mber 24, shows that Tal­cher, Simhadri and Rama­gundam, which supply nearly 1,400 MW to Tamil Nadu, have stocks for just a day. The 600 MW stage-III Met­t­ur thermal power station which restarted operation on Tuesday morning has been generating to its fullest capacity.

On Tuesday morning, Tan­geco met a morning peak demand of 9,305 MW while enforcing a load shedding to tune of 1,830 MW.

“With no wind power, we are pinning our hope on wid­espread rainfall to br­ing down the power dem­and in the state,” a senior Tangedco official said.