BHUBANESWAR: Faced with acute coal shortage, the Odisha Power Generation Corporation Ltd (OPGC) will be forced to shut down one of the two units of 220 MW each of its Stage-I thermal power station in Ib Valley area of Jharsuguda district anytime during Monday midnight.
“The available stock of the fossil fuel is enough to run one unit of Stage-I and two units of the recently commissioned 660 MW each at a reduced plant load factor (PLF) of its installed capacity,” said OPGC spokesperson Dilip Panda.
With no further improvement in coal supply to OPGC by Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL), the two new units of super critical power plants are operating at less than 60 per cent of their capacity while the first unit of Stage-I is running at about 85 per cent PLF.
“It is not good for the health of the two new power plants to run them at truncated PLF for a long time. If such a condition prevailed for few more days, the plant authorities have to take a call to shut down one more unit,” said a senior officer looking after the operation side of the plant.
The power generated from OPGC, a joint venture between the State Government and AES, is directly fed to the State grid. Shutting down of a unit will directly hit the State as Gridco, the bulk supplier of power, will have to buy costly power to meet the shortfall, sources in the Energy department said.
Alarmed by the OPGC decision to shut down one unit, Jharsuguda Collector Saroj Samal convened an emergent meeting with senior officers of MCL’s Ib Valley area and OPGC to tide over the situation.
“MCL has assured to increase coal supply to 18,000 tonne on October 14 and 20,000 tonne on October 15 from Lakhanpur open cast mines. However, everything depends on the coal production by the Coal India subsidiary which is able to produce about 30,000 tonne, half of its daily production capacity,” said a senior MCL official after the meeting.
The State-owned OPGC requires about 24,000 tonne coal per day to run the four units. It is being supplied with 12,000 tonne by MCL in the last two days.
The OPGC has offered to pay additional 40 per cent of the coal cost if MCL supplies more coal than the fuel supply agreement, Panda said.
Coal despatch in MCL’s Talcher and Ib Valley coalfields has been affected for more than a month due to protests by locals over several issues, including rehabilitation, resettlement and compensation. Similarly, MCL is unable to operate quarry no. 6 of Lakhanpur since Friday due to resistance by residents of Ubuda village demanding employment beyond R&R Policy of the State Government.
“The Rehabilitation and Peripheral Development Committee (RPDC) of Jharsuguda is scheduled to meet on October 15 to deliberate these issues. We expect that all contentious issues will be resolved and mining operation will be normal,” official sources said.