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The spectre of ‘forced outages' due to power plants breaking down has come back to haunt Tamil Nadu, veritably at the worst possible time, when the State is reeling under a fierce power shortage.
On Sunday, as much as 1,397 MW was lost to forced outages and this was presumably responsible for a 30 per cent load shedding at the peak hours.
More bad news
Information from the State load despatch centre shows that most of the plants undergoing repairs are unlikely to be put back on stream before mid March.
On Sunday, load shedding rose above 3,000 MW for four hours between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., which was over 30 per cent of the demand at that time.
Of the 1,397 MW of capacity under repair, 458 MW were under the private sector, including the 330 MW, gas-based PPN power project, which has been down for close to a month now due to a leak in the heat recovery steam generator system. (Sources in the company told Business Line today that the plant would go back on stream any time.)
Another 44 MW was lost due to a problem in the Kaiga atomic power plant in Karnataka, due to “a problem in the turbine-generator system”.
Of the plants run by the State utility, TANGEDCO, one of the units of the North Chennai Thermal Power Station, of 210 MW capacity, has been shut for 23 days and is not likely to be put back in operation before March 10. The problem has been stated as ‘stator coil failure'. Similarly, another 210 MW unit, of the Tuticorin Thermal Power Station has just gone out of operation due to “heavy leak in sea water booster pump discharge header” and will again take a month to be up and running.
Three units of the problematic Ennore Thermal Power Station, of a total capacity of 110 MW each, have been in a state of disrepair— one of them for 213 days.
These vintage power plants produce power at a low cost and their outage costs dear because the State has to purchase power from the market.
Yesterday alone, TANTRANSCO, the State transmission utility, purchased 18.347 million units of electricity. The average price of power on the Indian Energy Exchange was Rs 7, which means that TANTRANSCO's purchase was worth about Rs 12 crore.
Poor maintenance of the plants is responsible for their frequent outage, said an official of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board.
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