RAICHUR: Karnataka Power Corporation owned Raichur Thermal Power Station is again facing coal shortage crisis. The station has eight units and two of them have stopped generation for want of coal. One more unit is likely to stop generation by this night.
Sources said, Unit 2 and Unit 8 are closed. While Unit 8 was opened later at night on December 31, Unit 2 was opened on Sunday. Though the optimum generation capacity of the station is 1,720 MW, only 1,200 MW is being generated from the remaining six Units. It is all due to shortage of coal. Every day the station needs 25,000 metric tonne of coal to run all the eight units.
But present stock in the station is only 10,000 metric tonne.
Only three or four rakes of coal is received by the station every day and that is used to run the remaining units. Bankruptcy of the Karnataka Power Corporation is the main reason for shortage of coal supply according to highly placed sources. But officially it is said that non availability of wagons was the main reason. Officials claim that letters have been written to the Railway Department to seek more wagons. Unofficially they admit that paucity of funds was the reason behind the shortage of coal supply.
According to the department, there was no question of dearth of wagons. As Raichur is between main stations like Chennai-Delhi, there should not be any problem in getting wagons. The Railway Department’s priority is for goods carrying. If there was a dearth, the South Central Railways would have informed us, officials informed.