Panic in thermal power plants, blame it on EC

If immediate arrangements are not made, these power plants will then have to operate on their “scrapings” of coal, usually enough to get along for another day or so.

When contacted, a senior coal ministry official said that while the situation was very disturbing, there was little possibility of the plants actually shutting down as some arrangements are being made on an emergency basis. “We’ve faced such situations in the past and have scraped through each time. Emergency supplies will be arranged immediately for the plants which are in the most critical state,” hesaid. “And in the unlikely event of any plant having to shut down for a few hours, power will be managed from the grid, so there is little chance of consumers having to suffer,” the official added.

The reason for this alarming state of affairs, senior power ministry officials say, is that the transportation system for coal to power plants has come to a near standstill due to the long-drawn election process. With a huge number of trucks and dumpers commandeered for the elections, coal is not being transported from the mines to the railway wagons. Nor, for the same reason, is it being transported from the railway wagons to the power plants.

And while elections always cause a problem with all trucks getting pushed into election duty, to ferry paramilitary and security personnel, the exceptionally long duration of the polling schedule has aggravated the problem this time around.

In Delhi’s Indraprastha Station, coal stocks are down to 3,000 tonnes, or just enough to keep its boilers firing for anotherday, and those for the Rajghat power plant are enough for another three days of operations. By far the worst-affected plant is Obra in Uttar Pradesh which is down to below one day’s stocks, and Panipat is down to 2 days. Incidentally, while the actual recommended stocking is for a full month, few plants ever keep stocks for more than a fortnight.