Mahagenco considering to shut down old plants…

Power India found that faced with a shortage of coal for its thermal power stations, the Maharashtra State Power Generation Company Limited (MahaGenco) is working on a contingency plan wherein it may have to shut down old power generating sets to divert their coal linkages to the utility’s newly commissioned units.

 

MahaGenco managing director Subrat Ratho told that in case the coal supply scenario did not improve in a month, they will shut down old units and divert their coal to the new ones with a total of 1,750MW capacity at the Parli, Khaparkheda and Bhusawal power plants.

 

This includes a 250 MW set at Parli, a 500 MW unit at the Khaparkheda thermal power station and two 500 MW units each at Bhusawal. The units at Bhusawal are under trial runs. The Khaparkheda set, which declared commercial operations recently, was under forced outage due to lack of coal, while coal stocks for the Parli set were at critical levels.

 

“The MahaGenco is working on a contingency plan in case things do not improve in a month,” said Ratho, adding that otherwise, the new capacity would be stranded due to lack of coal. This in turn would lead to a financial crisis as these new units had high fixed costs, he added.

 

Ratho said they were likely to shut down old units in power plants like Koradi, Parli and Chandrapur and divert their coal linkages to these new plants under the plan. These old units are to be revamped and modernised by MahaGenco.

 

The MahaGenco has also asked the public sector coal companies to give an estimate of the coal that they could supply to them in the future, said Ratho, adding that it would do away with the “uncertainty” and help them decide on which units to concentrate on. “We will like to focus on these units at Khaparkheda, Parli and Bhusawal as they will provide maximum efficiencies,” he added.

 

Ratho also met officials from the coal ministry and the coal firms in New Delhi on Wednesday. “The meeting concentrated on shortage of rakes to carry coal from the Western Coalfields Limited,” said Ratho.

The MahaGenco needs 35 rakes of coal per day for its 7,980 MW coal-based thermal power capacity (including the two sets of 500 MW each at Bhusawal).

 

 

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