Vijayapura: The district’s NTPC Kudgi plant is also affected by the nation-wide coal shortage, as the plant is running out of coal to generate electricity.
According to the officials, the plant has no stock of coal while as per the norms, the plant should have stock of at least fifteen days. The officials said that they used to have a coal stock of around 8 lakh metric tonnes.
The plant was getting around 8 -10 rakes of coal every day, but now it is getting only around 5 rakes everyday which is being used instantly for generating power.
“It is like a hand to mouth situation as we use the coal for generating power as soon as it arrives. As of now, this is the situation, but we can’t say about the future. We may have to shut down the plant if we do not get enough coal in the coming days,” the officials said.
Interestingly, the plant had shut power generation till over a month ago due to the absence of demand. Since the State was getting required quantum of power from various sources such as wind energy and hydel power, it was not asking the NTPC to generate power.
“Now as the wind speed has come down and rains have stopped because of which hydel power generation has substantially reduced, the demand for thermal power units has increased,” the officials said.
Officials informed that one of the three units has been shut down for maintenance and the other two are working. The units together are now generating around 880 MW of power every day.
“We need more coal in stock, else the power generation will get affected severely,” the officials asserted.
