HYDERABAD: The 500 MW Kakatiya Thermal Power Plant (KTPP) has become the first victim of Sakala Janula Samme forcing the APGenco officials to shut down operations completely due to shortage of coal.The strike of Singareni miners is affecting the supply of coal to NTPC Ramagundam and NTPC Simhadri. The units are operational near to technical minimum. The coal supplies to KTPP virtually came to a nil on Friday.The efforts of KTPP officials to get coal from Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh apart from Godavarikhani in Karimnagar district, had proved futile with T activists obstructing the rakes.Project chief general manager N Mahabaleshwar Rao said they are ready to start operations whenever the arrival of coal supplies resumes. In the meantime, they will take up overhaul and repair works of the plant. The total demand for power stood at 258 Million Units (MU) on Thursday, while the total supply was put at 226 MU resulting in a shortfall of 32 MU.The APTransco officials are managing the widening gap between the demand and supply of power by imposing power cuts for long hours to the domestic sector, two-day power holiday a week to industries and one-hour power cut to agriculture.Following chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy’s request, the Centre has agreed to supply 150 MW of power from Karnataka and 234 MW from Jhajjar in Haryana from Saturday.Chief secretary Pankaj Dwivedi has been asked to take immediate measures to improve power supply to the domestic sector keeping in view the hardships of people.At a high level meeting convened by the chief secretary to review the impact of Sakala Janula Samme, the energy officials informed him that they were imposing power cut for four hours in Hyderabad, six hours in district headquarters and municipal corporations, eight hours in mandal headquarters and municipalities.There is no power supply from 6 am to 6 pm in villages.As a result, the farm sector has been badly hit and standing crops have started withering. The NTPC Ramagundam unit got affected to an extent of 800 MW and Simhadri up to 230 MW due to fall in coal stocks.Already, a 500 MW unit at NTPC Ramagundam was shut down on September 30 due to coal shortage. Another unit of 200 MW capacity was shut down due to boiler tube leak on October 4.Similarly, 210 MW VTPS-5 of APGenco and 500 MW of KTPP were closed due to coal shortage. The APGenco is trying to overcome coal shortage by getting additional rakes from Mahanadi Coalfields Limited and Western Coalfields Limited and also importing one lakh MT of coal.
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