Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde were supposed to flag off the 500MW unit but they could not come because of an extended session in Parliament today on the Anna impasse.
Till late on Saturday evening, all parties were trying to find a way out of the Lokpal jigsaw.
NTPC officials will take a decision on when to start the production within 15 days.
The delay in starting the unit, from which Bengal will be getting 147MW, may affect power supply in the state. Two other eastern states — Bihar and Jharkhand — will get 50.5MW and 32.5MW, respectively.
“We had initially demanded that 500MW should be available to us for merchant trading. But we were not allowed. As of now, 75MW from the new unit will remain unallocated,” said S.P. Singh, director (HR), NTPC.
The new unit will raise Farakka power station’s capacity to 2,100MW from 1,600MW.
NTPC also hopes that from 2013 there will be no drop in power generation from Farakka because of low availability of water from the Ganges during summer.
“The water shortage was acute in 2001-02. Then we thought of having a river-bed pump house project to ensure sufficient water supply for the lean period,” said U.P. Pani, executive director, (eastern region 1), NTPC.
The new unit, however, has its dedicated cooling system and will not be affected by the availability of water from the feeder canal.
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