Power situation eases

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, FEB 10 The power shortage in the State came down to 7 million units (MU) on Saturday from 14 MU as in the past one week, with the fourth and fifth units of NTPC at Ramagundam which broke down at different points of time last week, resuming operation and restoring flow to Andhra Pradesh at its regular 27 per cent share, about 580 MW, and the Srisailam hydel station and Lanco's Kondapalli plant stepping up the output, both to 7 MU a day.

The AP Transco which is meeting the shortage by taking as much load relief by way of areawise feeder shutdown, lasting 2 to 3 hours a day, is hopeful that the problem may be over by Tuesday. By then, the Vijayawada Thermal Power Station is expected to regain its lost unit, of 210 MW capacity, as indicated again here today by the AP Genco CMD, Mr J. Parthasarathy, to AP Transco officials. The Kothagudem Thermal Power Station of 250 MW capacity is likely to resume by February 20.

The supply would have been normal by now but for the unexpected outage of thermal stations at Farakka, Talcher and Kahalgaon in West Bengal, Orissa and Bihar respectively, the first two with 500 MW capacity and the last 260 MW. Consequently, the availability to the south from these Eastern Grid plants which used to be around 400 MW with 175 MW out of this going to Andhra Pradesh, came down to 250 MW and with that, the flow to the State also fell to 80-90 MW. A Grid Operation official of Transco said all of them might rejoin the grid anytime.

On Saturday, the Transco was able to maintain availability at 133 MU despite all these constraints without subjecting any section or place to much strain. While the total benefit out of all Central plants from where the State has a share -- NTPC's Ramagundam units, Kalpakkam Atomic Power Plant, Kaiga in Karnataka and Neyveli Lignite, was about 22 MU, the Lanco unit at Kondapalli was able to take its generation to 300 MW from 160 MW earlier, the official said. As against Srisailam's 7 MU, Nagarjurnsagar] was able to give 4 MU.

Meanwhile, parts of Nizamabad, Karimnagar and Medak suffered as supply was regulated to them following a 315-MVA power transformer at NTPC, Ramagundam, going out of service in the early hours of Saturday due to failure of lightning arrestor. However, alternative supply was arranged to them through other transformers. Work to restore the Ramagundam transformer has been taken immediately and it is expected to come back anytime.

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Section  : Southern States
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