Aman Sood
Tribune News Service
Patiala, October 17
The Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) finally heaved a sigh of relief after sudden rainfall led to a drop in temperature, which brought down the power demand to less than 6,000 MW from 9,500 MW witnessed last week.
For a fortnight, the PSPCL had been struggling in terms of low coal availability and high power demand leading to outages and rotational load shedding at several places across the state.
For the past almost over a fortnight, the coal-fired power plants are running at a reduced capacity because of stock shortage, leading to a grim situation as a majority of the state’s plants — both private and thermal — barely managed to produce energy.
Senior PSPCL officials confirmed that the demand for the entire state was around 6,000 MW on Sunday with two and a half days of coal left in stock at Nabha Power Limited and Talwandi Sabo Power Project. “There is no power shortage now and the demand is being fulfilled for all sectors,” they added.
Last week on Monday, the PSPCL procured 1,500 MW of power at a rate of over Rs 14 per unit when the state’s demand was over 8,700 MW. On Thursday, around 1,500 MW was bought from power exchange at a rate of Rs 11.29 per unit.
Meanwhile, PSPCL chairman-cum-managing director A Venu Prasad said the critical coal position in the state was still prevailing “but rainfall has reduced the agricultural and domestic consumption”, which means lesser demand. “We are hopeful that there will be no more power cuts with the demand dipping with each passing day. Our coal stocks at all plants will also improve by month-end,” Prasad said, adding that they could now manage to supply 8,000 MW while the demand was 6,000 MW.
Rain brings down demand, power outages likely to end
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