Chandigarh, August 31
A major power crisis is staring the Punjab Government in the face with three main thermal power plants in Bathinda, Lehra Mohabbat and Ropar left with barely around two days’ coal stock.

With the coal supply drastically reduced in the past few weeks and improvement in the supply uncertain, the Board of Directors of the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) and the state government have decided to meet on September 2 to explore options of importing coal.

Earlier this week, secretaries of the state and the Central Governments had met in New Delhi to discuss the crisis where the state government was asked why Panem, a leading coal-supplying company, was not supplying coal and if it was penalised. As a result, Coal India Ltd increased supply to the state government.

Panem has reportedly supplied only 33% of 17.5 lakh tonne of coal, which it was supposed to supply during the first quarter as per agreement with the PSPCL.

The imported coal comes with additional problems, sources said. It costs 50 to 60 paisa more per unit of electricity generated and has high calorific value due to which it has to be mixed with local coal to avoid damage to machinery.

Already running into losses, the PSPCL had recently increased power tariff to improve its financial position. The government is facing coal shortage along with poor monsoon, but so far no action has been taken against Panem, which was defaulting on the supply throughout the summer. Its dispute with the PSPCL over payments and price of coal is yet to be solved. PSPCL chairman KD Choudhry was hopeful that the situation would improve soon with increased supply of coal. “We have two to two-and-a-half days’ stock left. But we will manage the situation,” he said. Sources said the thermal plant staff was literally scratching the bottom of the coal stocks as less than the requisite coal rakes arrived. Besides short supply from the coal firms, the railways, too, failed to supply rakes.

In August, 251 rakes of coal against the requirement of 300-350 rakes reached the thermal plants at Ropar, Bathinda and Lehra. A rake is a goods train comprising 59 bogies. In July, only 249 rakes were received. Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) had stated in July that the Railways supplied only 52 of the allotted 64 rakes. Currently, the PSPCL was supplying 2,100-2,200-lakh units daily against a demand of 2,300 or 2,500-lakh units. The thermal plants supply around 25% of those. The state can’t hope to get power from other parts of the country as all were facing coal shortage.

Reports said there was about 9,110 MW less than potential demand at peak periods of the day across the country. Experts fear outages in some states and the worst-hit could be Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra. The shortage of coal has also increased expenditure on furnace oil. The per unit oil consumption during April and May was four to seven times higher than previous years.