New Delhi, Oct 29 (PTI) Private power producers haveasked Coal India for more rakes to alleviate the shortage ofcoal at their plants from its arm South Eastern Coalfields'Korba fields.
They have pointed out that the share of rake loading fornon-power and e-auction category of consumers have come down,which is being used to ramp up supplies to state and centralsector power plants.
"Most of the Private Power plants are facing super-critical stock levels (for less than four days) and are beingforced to reduce generation/ back down units," Association ofPower Producers (APP) said in a letter to Coal India ChairmanGopal Singh.
It further said,"..necessary instructions may be issuedfor augmentation of loading in rakes per day for Private Powerplants, to help alleviate the coal shortage and enable them tomeet their generation commitments".
According to an analysis done the by association for thelast four months about loading rakes per day (RPD) for theperiod from 4th to 17th day of each month from Korba(including Raigarh) area and the proportion of share ofloading on account of state/central sector plants hasincreased 49 per cent of the total kitty in October from 28per cent in July.
The state and central power plants got 7 RPD in Julyduring the review period, which increased to 12.1 RPD inOctober this year. The private power plants got 9.6 RPD inJuly, which remained almost same at 9.5 RPD in October.
The central/state sector plants got the benefits ofreduction in supplies to non-Power/eAuction category ofconsumers from 8.1 RPD in July to 3.1 RPD in October thisyear.
The association said in the letter, "The reduction inloading of Non-Power rakes has led to an equal increase inloading for State/Central Power plants, and no incrementalloading for Private Power plants".
According to Central Electricity Authority data forOctober 26, as many as 16 non-pithead power plants had coalstocks for less than four days, while 10 had for less than aweek, out of the total 112 projects monitored by it.
A power sector expert said that the short supplysituation in the country had led to price of power zooming toover Rs 10 per unit level this month, when consumes forcaptive use beelined at exchanges to buy power. PTI KKSBAL.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.
