City may face blackout due to shortage of coal

New Delhi: Delhi and other parts of the National Capital Region may face a blackout as the coal reserves with the Delhi government were only for a-day-and-a-half, said power minister Satyen-dar Jain, who has written to Union power minister R.K. Singh regarding the issue. This is the second time in the season that such a warning has been issued.

In May also, the issue had arisen as the coal reserves of the national capital had been reduced to a day.

In the letter, Mr Jain informed the minister about the coal supply shortage to the NCR power plants — Dadri, Jhajjar and Badarpur.

“Since June 19, the coal stock is continuously declining and has reached approximate 90,000 MT on Wednes-day, which is only one-and-a-half days requirement,” Mr Jain wrote, adding that the “situati-on is extremely critical”.

The reason he gave for the shortage is the non-availability of transportation rakes with the railways. Mr Jain requested Mr Singh to “intervene personally and take up the matter with the railways for providing rakes on priority for transportation of coal to these power plants to avoid load shedding or any other major grid incidence leading to blackouts in Delhi.”

Mr Jain said that ideally power plants should have a reserve coal stock for 15 days. He also said that the power demand was high during this season.

“The weather condition is also not favour-able and as a result the peak load of Delhi is crossing 6,900 MW every now and then,” he said.

Last month, when the peak power demand crossed 6000 MW four times in the national capital, the minister had issued a similar warning of blackouts. that the city could face as the thermal power plants had been operating below their capacity. Mr Jain had sought the then Union power minister Piyush Goyal’s intervention in the matter.