Two more thermal power units in Punjab shut down on Tuesday, causing the state power position to worsen as already three units are down following technical glitch and coal shortage. Of total 15 thermal units in Punjab, five are not generating power. On Tuesday morning, one unit of 660 MW at Talwandi Sabo thermal plant and one unit of 210 MW at GGSSTP Ropar thermal plant faced a shutdown due to boiler leakage. Sources claimed that it may take more than two days to plug the boiler leakage at both the units.
One unit each at Talwandi Sabo and Ropar power plants were already under maintenance. One of the two units of GVK is still shut down due to coal shortage.
On Monday, the power supply in the state was 1,730 lakh units, against the restricted demand of 1,751 lakh units. During night hours, Punjab faced a shortage of 300 MW. The maximum demand of state is around 8,200 MW. The power cuts in kandi and other rural areas are already being imposed by PSPCL. The coal position in the state continued to remain critical with Ropar and Lehra Mohabbat plant having 8.1 days and 5.9 days of coal stock. Similarly, three IPPs including TSPL plant has 5.9 days, NPL Rajpura power plant 19.8 days and GVK plant 2.6 days of stock.
“There was a shortage of power supply against the restricted demand and Ranjit Sagar Dam’s two power units, which operate during peak hours, have been made operational to bridge the demand-supply gap to some extent. Punjab has nearly 7,000 MW of in-house generation capacity, including renewable energy and 5,880 MW of thermal power generation capacity, but on Tuesday the total in-house generation capacity remained at 3,950 MW, including 3,210 MW of thermal in-house generation capacity,” said V K Gupta, AIPEF spokesperson.
A TSPL spokesperson said the unit got shut down on Monday late night and will probably be restored by Wednesday. The spokesperson claimed that only one of three units was operational as for now.
