Coal-starved thermal power stations in Andhra Pradesh got a breather with Coal India Ltd (CIL) making arrangements to supply coal from three of its collieries to NTPC's Ramagundam station and APGenco's power units on Thursday.
Production at Singareni Collieries Company Ltd, which is the major supplier of the raw material to these power plants, continued to be paralysed for the third day today in the wake of its 60,000 employees striking work in support of a separate statehood for Telangana.
Sources said SCCL, which had been assessing the situation, is at present working out alternative measures to re-start at least a part of its production.
CIL's move to despatch additional supplies helped NTPC to maintain its production at 1900 MW, about 70 per cent of its capacity, after it took out two units of 700 MW yesterday night as a result of inadequate coal supplies.
Two rakes of coal, amounting to 8,000 tonnes, reached NTPC's Ramagundam station on Thursday from Bilaspur. Nine more rakes, including six from Bilaspur, have been despatched and may reach the power station on Friday.
APGenco, which had stocks of five to six days of production at the beginning of the strike, is also likely to receive some supplies from CIL.
Meanwhile, APDiscoms have started load restrictions from Wednesday. They got power supplies of 242 MU from the APDiscoms yesterday, forcing it to observe load shedding to the extent of 4 MU during day time. They could, however, maintain seven hours supply to agriculture and continuous supply to the industrial sector.