Vijayawada: Due to severe coal shortage, power utilities have reported a deficit of four million units a day, leading to outages in various parts of the state.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has requested his Telangana counterpart K. Chandrasekhar Rao to incre-ase the daily coal supply to nine rakes a day from the existing supply of four from the Singareni coal mines.
Despite the severe shortage in coal supply, power utilities were able to supply 152 million units (MU) against the total demand of 156 MU on Sunday.
The total thermal power installed capacity of AP is 5,010 MW for which thermal stations have a coal fuel supply agreement with Mahan-andi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL). The annual coal linkage with MCL is 17.968 million metric tonnes and 8.88 million metric tonnes with SCCL.
Mr Reddy has also written to Union coal minister seeking alternate coal supply to AP GENCO plants to ensure supply under the fuel supply agreement. AP Bhavan officials are pursuing the matter in Delhi.
The closure of the Bharat-pur mines in the MCL area due to an accident in July followed by a strike by staff for 15 days, adversely affected coal supply to APGenco thermal power stations. The present heavy monsoon rains in the MCL and SCCL areas have also severely affected coal loading and supplies to APGenco. Because of these adverse conditions, APGenco is receiving only 45,000 metric tonnes from MCL and SCCL against the requirement of 70,000 metric tonnes.
