The power supply situation has turned grim in Andhra Pradesh with industrial consumers forced to bear with a day's power holiday, domestic consumers faced with shortage of up to six hours and farm sector consumers with erratic supply.
The demand supply mismatch has gone up to 33 million units on Monday forcing load shedding for all sections of consumers.
While the daily demand is around 260 MUs, the State is able to meet the requirement of about 227 MUs, resulting in shortage of about 33 MUs or about 1,400 MW. This is in spite of the purchase of nearly 1,500 MW from various Central generating stations and also utilising idle capacity from other independent power producers.
The State is faced with a tough situation as the coal supply from the State-owned Singareni Collieries Company Ltd has drastically fallen due to the ongoing strike by miners in support of separate Telangana.
Hydel generation
In addition, hydel generation from two of the major reservoirs — Nagarjunasagar and Srisailam has also come down as the Government is keen to retain higher levels in the reservoirs, which have been receiving very less fresh inflows.
According to Government sources, the total loss of coal production during the 14-day strike is estimated to be about 15.8 lakh tonnes. From a normal days' production of about 1.5-1.6 lakh tonnes a day it has come down to about 28,000 tonnes a day during the strike period, causing hardships to the thermal generation stations.
NTPC Ramgundam has managed to secure supplies from MCL, SSCL and other coal fields from Chhattisgarh and Orissa and managed to generate about 2,000 MW today, against its installed capacity of about 2,600 MW. It is generating about 1,000 MW at Simhadri power station.
With SCCL supplies being hit, thermal generation of APGenco and NTPC units was affected.
Even captive power units dependent on coal from SCCL have been adversely impacted.