On Tuesday, as power shortage in North India mounted to a deficit of 5,000 mw as per data available with the Northern Region Load Despatch Centre, Union coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal asked public sector coal companies to prioritise supply to power stations in these states. All thermal power stations in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan are facing critically low coal stocks. Jaiswal issued this directive in an emergency meeting with coal company officials.
The coal shortage has particularly crippled NTPC. Sources said several of its plants are supplying significantly less power than their installed capacities. Mining and loading of coal to these stations has suffered due to heavy rains and strikes. Coal supply from these mines is almost about 70% of the NTPC?s contracted quantity, they said. The worst affected are SCCL and CCL where the cutback in production is due to the repeated ?bandhs? as part of the Telangana agitation. During the last one month, coal supply from SCCL was less than 34%.
As a result, power supply in states including Delhi and Uttar Pradesh has got affected heavily. The affected plants of NTPC include Dadri near Delhi, Singrauli and Unchahar in North, Vindhyachal in Madhya Pradesh, Farakka and Kahalgaon in East and Ramagundam and Simhadri in South. Before the onset of monsoon, NTPC had a coal stock of 5.3 million tones to meet the requirement of 13.2 days which has depleted drastically.