ANGUL: Coal supply to Nalco power plant here from the Talcher coalfield has been enhanced against the daily linkage demand of 14,000 tonne enabling Nalco to build a comfortable stock.
The supply in the past was lower than the linkage demand, thus throwing the 960 MW Nalco power plant into a critical condition. The plant faced third such crisis in the last two years. MCL authorities attributed the short supply to the loss of their coal production due to frequent strikes, obstructions at their coal mines and drivers’ stir.
Meanwhile, Nalco, which was facing the worst-ever coal crisis, has stockpiled coal of about 1.7 lakh tonne at its power plant here. The stock was abysmally low at 14,000 tonne only a month ago. ‘‘We aim to build up four lakh tonne of stock to ward off any future crisis,’’ said the Executive Director of Nalco Smelter and Power Plant, A.K. Sharma. Out of this stock, imported coal is to the tune of 96,000 tonne while MCL coal is at about 70,000 tonne.
The captive power plant, which supplies uninterrupted power to the nearby Nalco smelter, is having six 120 MW running units at present keeping two units shut down. Nalco authorities normally operate seven of its eight units keeping one standby. But due to recent coal crisis it had shut down one more unit.
Nalco has also increased the coal drawal to the tune of 14,000 to 15,000 tonne a day from its linked Bharatpur mine at Talcher stopping coal offtake from another mine at Hingula. Nalco had to lift coal from Hingula by road to meet the crisis.