State shuts generation, buys cheaper power

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 21

A steep fall in power rates at exchanges has prompted the state to cut down on its own generation.

The state has shut down seven units of the three state-owned plants at Ropar, Lehra Mohabbat and Bathinda.

Today, four units at Ropar thermal plant, two at Lehra Mohabbat and one at Bathinda were operational, as the state increasingly relies on either buying power by trading on the power exchange, or through long and short term purchase agreements. While the state is getting just 1,140 MW of power from its own thermal plants, generation capacity of 1180 MW is shut down.

A senior official said today the average rate at which the power was bought at the exchange (the state bought 942 MW) was Rs 2.50 per unit. Two days ago, power was available for Rs 1.87 per unit. As against this, the rate at which the power is generated in the states thermal plants is Rs 3.50 per unit.

“We are saving money for the PSPCLby buying cheaper power. By doing this, we are also conserving on expensive coal,” he said.

Even the private players in power generation which run plants in Goindwal Sahib, Rajpura and Talwandi Sabo, today supplied 2,470 MW of power – much more than the state’s own thermal plants.

Sources told TNS that against a schedule of 5,847 MW of power today, the state has drawn 6, 180 MW from outside the state. This includes power bought at the exchange, the short term power purchase, long term power purchase, state’s share from Bhakra Beas Management Board and through power banking arrangements.

Officials in the PSPCL blame the government policies which are now favouring power purchase rather than generation. They say that the reason why power generation in the state continues to be costly vis a vis power from outside the state is that Punjab has not started using its captive coal mine, allocated to in March, 2015.

The state is buying expensive coal from a public sector undertaking, thus raising the cost of generation by 25- 30 per cent. They say that another reason for the higher cost of generation was that units at the state run thermal plants were being run on partial load. “If the plants are not backed down and run on full load (to its optimum capacity) then the cost of generation comes down,” said Baldev Singh Sra, president, PSEBEngineers Association.