Powerless in summer
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23/04/2008
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Hindu (New Delhi)
Come summer and most of the States in the country go through a period of power cuts or unscheduled load shedding to bridge the gap between peak demand and supply. The targets for power generation during the last two five-year Plans have just not been met, and the chasm between power generation and demand has widened. A booming economy has led to increased power consumption and a higher peak hour demand. The offer of free power to the agriculture sector and a populist subsidy for domestic consumers have ensured that the demand for electricity from two large sections of users can only rise. Consequently, the Central electricity agencies and the State Electricity Boards (SEBs) have been unable to meet the growing demand. Considering that over 60 per cent of power generated in the country comes from coal-fired thermal plants, the mining of quality coal and its availability on time have posed serious problems. The situation has worsened in the recent period and according to Minister of State for Power Jairam Ramesh, as on April 14, 2008, out of the 77 coal-based thermal stations, 24 were critical, having coal stocks that would last hardly seven days. The figure for the entire country was as low as 10.84 million tonnes. against the normative requirement of 22 million tonnes. Many of the large power-consuming States are now facing an acute shortfall. Some of the southern States have contracted to buy additional power from Central undertakings or some northern and eastern States to tide over the crisis, paying as high as Rs.7-9 per unit. Many of the SEBs have been allowed to import coal to meet the shortfall in supply and also to procure better quality coal. Unfortunately, some of the States that went in for gas-based power plants have been unable to generate to capacity for want of gas. Their load factor has come down and another 13,000 MW of power from this fuel can be generated only when gas is made available. Because of the high initial investment costs, renewable energy sources have not been tapped to potential. The installed capacity in this segment is just 11,449 MW. It is under these circumstances that the Planning Commission and the Union Power Ministry are pushing the Central utilities and the SEBs to achieve the 78,577 MW target set for additional generation capacity during the current Plan period. Unless they are able to achieve this target, the power scenario will continue to remain grim, and the consequent problems of outage, tripping of power, overdrawal by some States, and the unannounced power cuts will become routine phenomena.